Reader JS wrote in: “Sandy Koufax did steroids. He was given them by the Dodgers doctors, it’s in Jane Leavy’s book. It wasn’t legal. That was forty years ago. I don’t have any idea what Mickey Mantle was on. People are flawed. Baseball is imperfect.”
Jane Leavy’s book, Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, is a great read, but I don’t have a copy handy. After checking with Bob Timmerman who did, there is a reference to steroids in the book. I was able to get in touch with Jane Leavy to clarify.
I asked Ms. Leavy if she meant corticosteroids or if Koufax, a player of the same era that we know steroids and hGH made some small inroads into the game, now had to be lumped in with the “juicers.” Leavy states she meant corticosteroids, the same type of “cortisone injection” that we see performed so often in baseball to this day.
The use of the word “steroids” as a generic is often confusing. At least one hero remains safe for today.
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