Alex Rodriguez admitted to taking steroids in the past, but Victor Conte, the founder of BALCO who supplied illegal substances to professional athletes, said A-Rod was steroid-free in 2012.
“The answer is no. I’m not at liberty to talk in great detail about someone’s blood test results, and I would never do that. But to answer your question directly, I, in general terms, just said these are some of the things that are markers that you can see if it looks like somebody has been doing things, and let’s just say, in general terms, I saw none of that in terms of what we collected on A-Rod,” Victor Conte said on ESPN Radio.
Conte said that he checked A-Rod’s blood samples prior to giving him legal supplements last year and they were clean.
Rodriguez had one of his worst years as a professional in 2012, with 18 home runs and 57 RBIs in 122 games. He was even left out of the playoff lineup in certain games and pinch hit for on numerous occasions. He had offseason hip surgery to repair a torn labrum and missed the first four months of the season before returning to the lineup on Aug. 5.
He has five hits in 19 at bats this season including one home run and is appealing a 211-game ban for receiving PEDs from the Biogenesis clinic. That appeal is expected to be settled during the offseason.