Monday, February 28, 2005

Kevin Towers suspected Cami was using Steroids and now feels guilty

I don't have ESPN insider so I'm not sure what else this says:

Deadly Silence
Kevin Towers Padres GM Kevin Towers had suspected Ken Caminiti was using steroids. He tells ESPN The Magazine's Buster Olney he kept silent because "it helped the organization and helped me."


Here's a little more:

Buster Olney's story appears in this week's issue of ESPN The Magazine, available on newstands Wednesday.

Ken Caminiti was the first player to admit using steroids. Now Padres general manager Kevin Towers, once Caminiti's boss, is the first person in baseball management to stand up and acknowledge that he said nothing about steroids for years because of box-office success.

If Caminiti's only problem was drinking, Towers believes he could have confronted that issue bluntly, talked to Caminiti about how he was ruining his life and career.


Very upsetting.

UPDATE:

Here's some quotes from the insider piece:

And Towers is honest with himself. "Ifeel somewhat guilty, because I felt like I knew"

"I still don't know for sure, but Cammy came out and said that he used steroids, and I suspected. Selfishly, the guy was putting up numbers, and I didn't do anything about it. That's just the truth."

"The truth is, we're in a competitive business and these guys were putting up big numbers and helping your ballclub win games. You tended to turn your head on things. And it really wakes you up when someone you admire as a person is no longer around. You can't help but think, could I have done something differently four of five years ago that might have changed what happened to him?"

"I hate to be the one voice for the other 29 GMs, but I'd have to imagine that all of them, one point or other, had reason to think that a player on their ballclub was probably using, based on body changes and things that happened over the winter."

"... If he's not there, not only am I not wearing a ring, who knows if I'm still a general manager? Those were three of the best years we ever had."

1 Comments:

At 3:49 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sometimes KT's mouth gets him in trouble, but this seems like a brave and honest statement to make. Bravo KT.

 

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