The Drug Enforcement Administration and Major League Baseball are investigating a Miami-area man named Anthony Bosch — who has worked closely with Alex Rodriguez — for Bosch’s possible links to performance-enhancing drugs, sources have told the Daily News. The sources asked not to be identified because of the ongoing probe.
Bosch, a well-known figure among current and former Latin ballplayers in South Florida, has advised the embattled Yankee superstar on nutrition, dietary supplements and training, a source familiar with Miami-area anti-aging centers told The News.
MADDEN: BAD RX FOR A-ROD WOULD LEAVE YANKS IN GOOD HEALTH
The source said Rodriguez and Bosch consulted with at least one other expert about blood test results. Bosch, records show, has been affiliated with a number of Miami-area medical companies and clinics.
Major League Baseball investigators have turned over information about Bosch and his father, physician Pedro Publio Bosch, to federal investigators, sources have told the Daily News. Bosch and his father had already come under scrutiny from MLB and the DEA in 2009 for their links to Manny Ramirez after the then-Dodgers slugger was suspended that year for 50 games for using a banned substance.
RELATED: CASHMAN SAYS IT’S POSSIBLE A-ROD COULD MISS SEASON
The Daily News reported in June of 2009 that the DEA initiated an administrative review of Pedro Bosch because investigators suspected he wrote a prescription for the banned drug used by Ramirez, who was banned for violating MLB’s drug policy that year.
Anthony Bosch was described by the Daily News and other media outlets in 2009 as being well-known in Latin-American circles, his relationship with players dating as far back as the early 2000s when he attended parties with players and attended games in New York and Boston.
Sources involved in the probe have told The News that MLB and federal investigators are trying to determine if Anthony Bosch and his father are involved in supplying banned substances to ballplayers.
Rodriguez cut ties to controversial Canadian doctor Anthony Galea not long after American and Canadian law-enforcement agencies launched investigations into the Toronto sports physician and human growth hormone proponent in 2009. That was when American authorities found HGH and other drugs in his assistant’s car as she tried to cross the border. Galea, who said he treated A-Rod with a blood-spinning technique called platelet-rich plasma therapy (PRP), was indicted on five drug-related counts in October of 2010, but the U.S. government agreed to drop four of the charges if he complied with a plea agreement and cooperated with prosecutors pursuing other investigations.
The indictment said Galea traveled to the United States more than 100 times between 2007 and 2009 to treat more than 20 patients in their homes and in hotel rooms.
Galea pleaded guilty in July of 2011 to transporting misbranded and unapproved drugs into the United States. He was sentenced to a year of supervised release in December of 2011.
Calls placed to Anthony Bosch’s telephone numbers in Miami weren’t returned, nor were calls to Pedro Bosch’s Coral Gables area clinic.
Major League Baseball declined comment, as did the Yankees. Rodriguez’s lawyer, Jay Reisinger, declined comment.
According to sources familiar with the Miami investigation, MLB is concerned about a widespread ring of suppliers of synthetic testosterone, human growth hormone and other drugs to players who have sought to circumvent MLB’s collective drug-testing program through difficult-to-detect performance-enhancing drugs that players administer through patches or creams or gels on their palms or elbows or under their arms.
Several high-profile players failed drug tests in 2012, including Melky Cabrera, Guillermo Mota, Bartolo Colon, Marlon Byrd, Yasmani Grandal and Carlos Ruiz. Those incidents led MLB and the Players Association to revamp the drug-testing program to include the more sophisticated carbon isotope ration exam that can detect the presence of exogenous testosterone in a player’s urine sample.
Ramirez was suspended after drug tests revealed elevated levels of testosterone in his urine. Medical records obtained by MLB officials included a prescription for human chorionic gonadotropin, a female fertility drug that is banned by MLB.
HCG is popular with athletes who use steroids because it helps reestablish normal testosterone production after extensive steroid use and helps combat testicular atrophy.
Pedro Bosch provided Ramirez with the prescription for the drug. They also suspected that Anthony Bosch served as a liaison between Ramirez and Pedro Bosch.
