By Gil LeBreton
glebreton@star-telegram.com
He is a big man with a big laugh.
Anyone who has been around Nelson Cruz can attest to the laugh.
But whether the Texas Rangers' clubhouse will hear it anytime soon remains to be seen.
Cruz's name was among those mentioned in a report in the
Miami New Times that linked professional athletes to a South Florida anti-aging clinic that allegedly provided performance-enhancing drugs.
Cruz met with the media upon arrival at spring training last week, but said he had been instructed by his lawyers not to comment.
"As soon as it's done, I'll address it and tell everything I know," Cruz told reporters.
In the meantime, Cruz and the Rangers are sticking with the story that this involves an ongoing investigation being conducted by Major League Baseball and that they will await the investigation's outcome.
Attorneys for Cruz, the Pittsburgh firm of Tom Farrell and Jay Reisinger, have already denied the information contained in the
New Times report.
What happens from here remains murky. Major League Baseball has no subpoena power and it can't compel
New Times to turn over its interview and evidence records.
Nor is there the oft-sworn-by smoking gun, a failed drug test, by one of the alleged miscreants. Don't forget that Barry Bonds, Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong never failed a drug test during their careers, either.
The MLB commissioner's office doesn't need a smoking gun, however. If enough evidence can be obtained linking a player to performance-enhancing substances, the commissioner has the right to impose a suspension.
Evidence, perhaps, like having a player's name -- and his code name, "Mohamad" -- show up in the crude, handwritten note pages of Tony Bosch, who ran the Biogenesis of America clinic?
Well, yeah. That's all it might take.
Until now, it's been hard not to embrace the baseball saga of Nelson Cruz. His career supposedly had hit dead ends both in Milwaukee and in early look-sees with the Rangers.
But in late August 2008, it all seemed to finally come together for Nellie at the age of 28. He hit 33 home runs the next season and made the American League All-Star team.
A late bloomer?
Raise your hand if, as I did, you chose to believe so. He's been fun to watch. He had a stadium hot dog named after him.
How, though, is Cruz going to explain how his name -- with dollar figures attached for products allegedly rendered -- got into Bosch's notebook?
It won't help Cruz that one of the suspected Bosch co-clients is Milwaukee's Ryan Braun, the once-MVP whose escape on a chain-of-custody technicality from a 2011 positive drug test continues to rankle MLB officials.
Braun's involvement in the story, as well as the pinstriped glare cast by Alex Rodriguez, all but guarantee that the
New Times report won't quietly vanish from the sports pages.
New Times, meanwhile, faces a dilemma of its own. If it declines to cooperate with MLB, its own credibility and brave report will be consigned to the dust bins of irrelevance under the piles of player denials.
If it does assist MLB, however,
New Times will have helped to shake an American institution to its core. Two MVPs, with one swing of the bat.
Nelson Cruz could help the MLB case by telling investigators what he knows about the Biogenesis clinic and Tony Bosch. But I wouldn't count on it. The Farrell and Reisinger law firm that Cruz has enlisted has a long history of representing baseball players suspected of using performance-enhancing drugs -- Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa and Andy Pettitte, among others.
If deemed guilty, Cruz faces a 50-game suspension.
Nobody will be laughing.
Gil LeBreton, 817-390-7697Twitter: @gilebreton
Looking for comments?
