Of course, there are no good guys in this tale, told in a forthcoming book, "Blood Sport: Alex Rodriguez, Biogenesis and the Quest to End Baseball's Steroid Era" by authors Tim Elfrink and Gus Garcia-Roberts. Thoroughly researched by authors Tim Elfrink and Gus Garcia-Roberts, "Blood Sport" offers a blow-by-blow description of the history of the events that eventually led to the suspensions of some 15 Major League ballplayers, most notably the season-long (2014) suspension of Alex Rodriguez. In fact, if there are 750 major league baseball players, you can imagine there were 750 requests for what baseball terms TUEs -- therapeutic use exemptions -- for everything from testosterone to Ritalin and Adderall. Smith was the IPA -- independent program administrator -- appointed jointly by MLB and the MLBPA, but supposedly not answerable to either. [+] Enlarge Jim McIsaac/Getty Images A new book says MLB permitted Alex Rodriguez to use testosterone before his 2007 MVP season. A North Carolina physician, Bryan W. Smith, approved the medical exemption. Because as we have recently learned, a disproportionate number of professional baseball players suffer from attention deficit disorder, too. A baseball source refused to tell ESPNNewYork.com whether the Yankees were aware of A-Rod's medical exemption when they tore up his old contract and replaced it with a new 10-year, $275 million deal that could add another $30 million in home run bonuses. If nothing else, this latest A-Rod tale -- that he requested, and received, permission from MLB to use testosterone and a female fertility drug called clomiphene citrate (Clomid), both banned performance-enhancers, on the grounds that his body was deficient in both substances -- only reminds us of how this man's hubris truly knows no limits. Even if, at 40 -- the age he will turn on July 27 of next season -- he can't put up the kind of numbers he did in the Golden Age of 2007, he is still entitled to some $61 million of Hal Steinbrenner's money. And with a little bit of luck, he will still hit enough home runs to collect on at least one, and maybe even two, of those $6 million bonus checks. In fact, the only way this information even came to light was because it was introduced into evidence at A-Rod's grievance hearing in his 162-game suspension, of which a confidential copy of the testimony "somehow'' found its way into the hands of the authors. Not only does "Blood Sport" provide a detailed account of the story that culminated in the suspensions of Rodriguez and others, but it also goes beyond professional baseball.
– Alex Rodriguez used performance-enhancing drugs in 2007, the year he hit 54 home runs, won his second MVP award, and then opted out of his contract, leading to the biggest pay-day in baseball history—and he did it with the league's blessing. An excerpt from the upcoming book, Blood Sport, published in Sports Illustrated yesterday reveals that Rodriguez applied for a "therapeutic use exemption" to baseball's drug policy, which allows players to take banned substances if they have a medical reason. Rodriguez got an exemption to use testosterone, the league revealed in Rodriguez's 2013 grievance hearing. In the hearing, MLB's COO called testosterone "the mother of all anabolics," and noted that the most common reason a healthy young man would be low on it would be "prior steroid abuse." Only one other player that year got an exemption for a drug that would boost testosterone. The next year, A-Rod got another exemption, this time for a female fertility drug that bodybuilders often use to boost testosterone. "For a guy with low testosterone, he sure has some set of onions," quips Wallace Matthews in a scathing piece at ESPN; he calls the story "not only comically ironic, but deeply embarrassing to baseball." For the full excerpt, which also explains how A-Rod fell in with Biogenesis, click here.