BALTIMORE — Retired Orioles first baseman David Segui admitted Monday that he experimented with anabolic steroids, purchased shipments from former Kirk Radomski, a New York Mets clubhouse attendant and admitted drug distributor, and restated he used human growth hormone with a legal prescription from a Florida doctor, according to a published report.
But Segui told The (Baltimore) Sun that he refused to talk to former Sen. George Mitchell, whose report on performance-enhancing drugs will be released shortly, because he didn’t want to betray the trust of other ballplayers or be caught in speculation about what former teammates or opponents did or didn’t do.
Segui, 41, also didn’t want anyone wondering what information might have came from him.
“I have nothing to hide. I have no problem talking about what I have done,” said Segui, who spent eight of his 15 big league seasons with the Orioles. “But I never want any other players to think I was out there talking about their business. Because I do know a lot, but people have told me things in confidence and I don’t want to be spreading that.”
It is expected that the Mitchell investigation, authorized by commissioner Bud Selig in 2006, will implicate dozens of current and former players.
Many of those had a relationship with Radomski, the former Mets employee who has cooperated with Mitchell and will be sentenced in February for supplying players with performance-enhancers and other illegal drugs.
Segui said he met Radomski after the Orioles traded him to the Mets in 1994; they became close and still converse by phone several times a week — usually about fishing and family.
At first, Radomski helped Segui with nutrition and weightlifting. Eventually, Segui said, he paid Radomski for different products, from legal supplements and workout gear to anabolic steroids and clenbuterol, an asthma drug that allegedly melts body fat and is on baseball’s banned substances list. Segui also occasionally lent Radomski money.
“It was stuff you do for a friend,” he said. “I always had a feeling — I knew when more and more guys were going through him — that there is probably going to come the day when he is going to get caught.”
“I played more years where I didn’t take anything than years where I did take something,” Segui said, without giving specifics. “I never denied it or pretended to be an angel.”
Segui retired from the Orioles in 2004. He made headlines in June 2006 when he went public with his use of human growth hormone after he believed his name was included in a redacted federal indictment of former Orioles pitcher Jason Grimsley.
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