Former Cy Young Award-winner Eric Gagne, one of the more dominant closers of his time, uses a new biography to cast aspersions on his former Los Angles Dodgers teammates.
Gagne said in the French-language book, “Game Over: The Story of Eric Gagne,” that a whopping 80 per cent of the Dodgers when he was there used performance-enhancing drugs.
Gagne set a major league record converting 84 consecutive save chances. He admits that he used human growth hormone over five cycles in a three-year period toward the end of his career.
“It was sufficient to ruin my health, tarnish my reputation and throw a shadow over the extraordinary performances of my career,” Gagne says the book.”
Gagne won the 2003 Cy Young while converting all 55 of his save opportunities and posting a 1.20 ERA. He had elbow surgery in 2005 and signed as a free agent with the Texas Rangers before the 2006 season.
Gagne signed a minor league deal with the Dodgers in 2010, but was released during spring training and hasn’t pitched in the major leagues since 2008.
Gagne first admitted publicly to using HGH in 2010.
In the book, Gagne does not provide any names of players he says used PEDs. Baseball began stricter testing in the spring of 2006. Players are subject to HGH testing during spring training and in the offseason, but not during the season.
“I was intimately aware of the clubhouse in which I lived. I would say that 80 percent of the Dodgers players were consuming them,” Gagne says in the book..
That’s a high number, one that many certainly will challenge – especially since he did not name names. But it also ends any notion of Gagne returning for a commemorative event at Dodger Stadium.
He might not be totally blackballed from the team for these claimse, but it’s close.
