For several years now, MLB commissioners have been paying close attention to the substances players ingest. Dietary supplements, drugs and artificial products are used to improve physical performance or are prescribed to heal injuries. However, in recent years, these have been issues that have concerned the highest levels of the league.
Recently, former Boston Red Sox player and one of the most feared players of the 1990s, Mo Vaughn, admitted to using growth hormone for a knee injury in order to recover from the pain and discomfort it caused him at the end of his career.
Mo Vaughn’s injuries and his secret treatment
Mo Vaughn was named American League Most Valuable Player in 1995 and in an interview with The Athletic magazine, he confessed that he had injected himself with human growth hormone in his knee to prolong his career. In those days, there was not as much scrutiny of medical treatments and substances as there is today. Although it had to be reported to both the team office and the MLB commissioner, his treatment was kept secret.
“I was trying to do everything I could. I knew I had a bad knee and it was degenerating. I was injecting human growth hormone into various points so that it would heal or at least the pain would go away because it was really very difficult to play with such discomfort. I could have said it at the time, but I preferred to keep it private for fear of being banned. I did everything I could to help in the process,” Vaughn told The Athletic.
MLB investigations into the use of banned substances
Mo Vaughn was among the players named in 2007 in the Mitchell Report, which investigated the use of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. The report offered evidence that Vaughn made three separate purchases of HGH in 2001. Major League Baseball did not ban HGH until 2005, almost two years after Vaughn’s last game.
Mo Vaughn was one of the most effective hitters in baseball during his prime while with the Boston Red Sox. Even in his MVP year, he posted a mark of 39 home runs with 126 RBIs.
He began his Major League career with the Boston Red Sox from 1991 to 1998, then moved on to the Anaheim Angels from 1999 to 2000 and finally finished with the New York Mets from 2002 to 2003. In 2001, he suffered a knee injury along with a torn ligament, which caused him to miss the entire season.
Read the full article here
