(Maybe) Bad News for Bagwell, Pettitte, Clemens

[Gregory Pratt]

What a tangled web baseball has weaved.

 

For years, Kelly Blair, the owner of 1-on-1 Elite Personal Fitness, bragged to friends and clients who worked out at his Texas gym that he supplied performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes.

 

Blair, who was recently questioned by federal agents conducting the Roger Clemens perjury investigation, regaled visitors to his Pasadena gym with stories about providing drugs to Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Jeff Bagwell and other professional athletes, according to sources. Bagwell, Pettitte and Clemens were teammates on the Houston Astros in 2004 and 2005.

 

"Kelly wanted everybody to know he worked with the big guys," says one friend with close ties to Blair and the gym, who requested anonymity because that person feared retribution from Blair and his friends. "He wanted to be known as the guy behind the professional athletes."

 

That is in stark contrast to the account he gave recently to a reporter from ESPN.com, in which he admitted to having dealt steroids and used steroids and HGH but said he told the investigators he did not provide HGH to Clemens or to Pettitte's father, Tom. Blair, who told ESPN.com that Andy Pettitte visited his gym once, recently removed a photograph of Pettitte and himself from his Web site.

 

"I told them everything," Blair said of his March interview with the FBI. "I told them what I done in the past. I didn't get Tommy Pettitte growth hormone. I didn't get Roger Clemens growth hormone."

 

But another source close to Blair and the gym tells a different story. That source saw Blair load steroids and human growth hormone into a box with separate compartments for what the source said Blair described as each player's drug regimen: a combination of Deca Durabolin, HGH and Winstrol in the compartments.

 

"There were three separate portions," the source said. "Not all of them were the same because they were all taking different ----."

 

When the source asked Blair if the drugs were for sale, the trainer said they were not.

 

"I asked him, 'Hey, is this stuff for sale?'" the source said. And he was like, 'No, that stuff's going to Clemens, Bagwell and Pettitte."

 

The sources said they didn't know if Blair had actually provided drugs to Clemens and the other players or if he was just telling tall tales. But as three sources told the Daily News in February, Blair is believed to have supplied Pettitte's father with HGH.

 

After the release in December of the Mitchell Report on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, Pettitte admitted using HGH to treat an elbow injury in 2004, the first season of his three-year contract with the Astros. He told congressional investigators earlier this year that he received the drug from his father, who hoped growth hormone would help relieve his heart problems and other ailments. Pettitte told the investigators that his father got the HGH from a trainer at the gym where he worked out.

 

"Do you have any idea where your father obtained the HGH?" Pettitte was asked by investigators.

 

"Yeah, I do now. Yes."

 

"Where is that?"

 

"The gym that he works out in. A guy that's the trainer there."

 

Sources close to Pettitte identified Blair as that trainer.

 

Blair and Pettitte attended Deer Park (Tex.) High School together in the 1980s. In addition, Blair's sister is married to Pettitte's brother-in-law.

 

"I think the whole reason Tommy used growth hormone is because Kelly revved him up about it," one source said. "He showed him literature about it and stuff off the Internet and flipped him."

 

Sources told The News earlier this year that Blair got HGH through contacts in Mexico and from an HIV-positive man who used it to stem muscle-wasting. Blair indicated to ESPN.com that Tom Pettitte's source may have been someone in his gym who obtained HGH to counter the weight and muscle loss associated with AIDS.

 

Blair also told ESPN.com that he sent injured pitchers to Michael C. Scally, a Houston doctor, to see if they qualified for HGH treatment. Scally told The News that he didn't know Blair but that his primary practice area is the treatment of hypogonadism, a condition that occurs when testicles stop producing testosterone, often because of steroid abuse. "I don't know Pettitte or Clemens," he said, adding that he has treated athletes by prescribing low doses of HGH. "It helps the testicles go back to work," he said.

 

Two of Blair's longtime associates said numerous shipments of performance-enhancing drugs passed through Blair's gym. The drugs came from a variety of sources, including Craig Titus, the bodybuilder who has been accused of murdering his live-in assistant, Melissa James, according to one of the sources.

 

"Everybody around here knew what Kelly was doing," the source said. "He was open and brazen about it."

 

Attorneys for Brian McNamee, the former Yankee assistant trainer who told former Sen. George Mitchell that Clemens and Pettitte had used performance-enhancing drugs, said Tom Pettitte told McNamee that he picked up human growth hormone in the parking lot of a gym near Deer Park. McNamee told federal investigators this year about Tom Pettitte's HGH use.

 

Richard Emery, one of McNamee's lawyers, said he may also seek to depose Blair about what he knows about Clemens, who has filed a defamation suit against McNamee and has steadfastly denied any use of performance-enhancers. "It's all going into the file for discovery," Emery said.

 

Clemens and Pettitte were among the 90 players named in the report Mitchell issued in December. Bagwell was not identified as a steroid user in the report. Barry Axelrod, Bagwell's agent, told The News earlier this year that he had received phone calls from somebody he described as "an overzealous federal investigator on a fishing expedition" who asked if his client knew Blair or Tom Pettitte.

 

He told The News yesterday that the investigator who contacted him regarding Bagwell was not from the government but from a party involved in the investigation.

 

"My take on the reason we were contacted before is because there was some indication or mention that this guy (Blair) had dealt with Andy Pettitte and another prominent Astro," Axelrod said. "I don't think Jeff was the only one who was contacted. I think some other prominent Astros were contacted to say, 'Were you the other prominent Astro?' The effort being by process of elimination."

 

Axelrod has said his client does not know Kelly Blair and did not use performance-enhancing drugs. He said Bagwell had met Tom Pettitte once.

 

Blair and his partner Kevin Schexnider did not return several calls for comment for this story. Andy Pettitte's lawyers declined comment, and Clemens' representative, Patrick Dorton, issued this statement: "We now seem to be entering the realm of complete fiction. Roger Clemens has no relationship with this individual. As Roger testified in Congress, he has never used steroids or human growth hormone."

 

Blair, meanwhile, made enemies along the way by overcharging clients for the drugs or by giving them bogus steroids, the sources said. They said he would sometimes sell unsuspecting customers vitamin pills instead of performance-enhancing drugs, or fill vials that had once contained growth hormone with olive oil.

 

One of Blair's associates said unhappy customers rarely confronted the trainer when they were ripped off.

 

"Kelly is a big dude," he said. "He was always the biggest guy around here."

[daa84]

at this point nothing more really hurts clemens...everyone knows he did it...no new evidence hurts him too much (at least in the court of public opinion)...this is worst for pettitte who everyone believed, at least for a while...which frankly his whole story i never really bought in the first place

[Gregory Pratt]

Well, it's opening up a can of worms for Bagwell, more than anything.

[Milkman delivers]

Oh yeah, I'm so surprised that Bagwell did steroids. I can't even emphasize how utterly surprising this is to me. I mean, it's almost as surprising as when I found out that Sammy Sosa did steroids...just complete shock.

[Gregory Pratt]

Anytime a player who people like you and I suspect but that has not been linked to steroids in a newspaper is linked to steroids in a newspaper it is a significant occurrence in the history of steroids in baseball and the steroid era.

[Brian]

Oh yeah, I'm so surprised that Bagwell did steroids. I can't even emphasize how utterly surprising this is to me. I mean, it's almost as surprising as when I found out that Sammy Sosa did steroids...just complete shock.

 

I've always suspected him. Look how ripped he was for such a small guy and just totally broke down. Friends with Caminiti as well.

[witesoxfan]

I've always suspected him. Look how ripped he was for such a small guy and just totally broke down. Friends with Caminiti as well.

 

It's sad because he seemed to be generally considered a good person, atleast to me. Looking at it now, it really isn't as surprising as it should be.

 

This does, however, make 2005 much, much sweeter. Everyday that passes makes it sweeter.

[Milkman delivers]

I hope you realized I was being very sarcastic, Bri.