In his report on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball,
dedicated more pages to Angel Presinal, a trainer based in the Dominican Republic, than he did to almost any of the dozens of players he cited.
and Larry Bigbie took up more than the five pages that those concerning Presinal did in the report, a fact that underscores the concerns Major League Baseball has had about Presinal over the past decade. During much of that time, he has been barred from team clubhouses.
“We have actively discouraged his presence in major league facilities and have informed certain teams to discourage their players from associating with him,” Rob Manfred, baseball’s top drug-testing official, said Saturday.
from 2001 to 2003, when Rodriguez played for the
. Rodriguez revealed in an interview Feb. 9 that he had used banned substances during that period, saying that his cousin, whom he declined to identify, had imported the drugs from the Dominican Republic.
Although baseball officials tried, to some extent, to keep Presinal away from players starting in 2002, he was a trainer for the Dominican team at the 2006 World Baseball Classic. (Major League Baseball sanctions the Classic but does not pick the teams’ trainers or players.) Since then, Presinal has continued to work with various major leaguers, including
,
, José Guillén and Rodriguez, who, according to The Daily News, worked with Presinal as late as 2007.
On Saturday, David Ortiz of the
told reporters in Fort Myers, Fla., that he had worked out with Presinal at a facility near Ortiz’s home in the Dominican Republic. But Ortiz said he did not see anyone using performance-enhancing drugs.
“All I know is that we all worked with him as a group of guys that wanted to be ready in spring training and that’s about it,” Ortiz said.
As much as Presinal concerns baseball officials, he is extremely popular among Dominican players, who look past his potential links to steroids that were highlighted in the
.
In 2001, Presinal was detained by Canadian law-enforcement authorities after they discovered steroids in a piece of luggage unloaded from the
’ plane. Presinal, who was working as the personal trainer for the Indians slugger Juan González, told the agents that the bag was not his but that it belonged to González.
González, in turn, told the Canadian authorities that he did not know what was in the bag and that he had sent it on the flight at Presinal’s request. The Mitchell report said that, according to an account of the incident provided by the Indians security agent Jim Davidson, Presinal admitted under further questioning that he had packed and carried the steroids for González, and that he had helped González administer the drugs.
According to Davidson’s account in the Mitchell report, “Presinal also claimed to have assisted several other high-profile major league players in taking steroids.”
Presinal denied these assertions in an interview with investigators for the Mitchell report in 2007 and said that he did not know of any other players who used steroids or performance-enhancing drugs. In
, which was posted on its Web site Friday, he again denied that he had injected players with steroids but described himself as a “doctor of major league teams.”
That, of course, is the kind of statement that frustrates Major League Baseball, which took little action in the aftermath of the 2001 luggage incident.
According to a chronology in the Mitchell report, security officials from the commissioner’s office said they would handle the investigation of Presinal in 2001. But the report said that the investigation appeared to have gone only as far as searching for Presinal’s Cleveland address. It also said that baseball did not contact any witnesses until a news article about the 2001 luggage incident was published five years later.
Baseball did not have a testing program for steroids until 2003, and did not have any penalties for a positive test until 2004. But in the years before that, players could be subjected to steroid testing for “reasonable cause.” The luggage incident, however, did not result in testing for González.
Manfred told Mitchell’s investigators that no reasonable-cause testing of González was done because of the conflicting statements made by Presinal, González and others. Manfred, though, stated that he did contact Gene Orza, the chief operating officer of the players union, who did not want González tested under the circumstances.
On Saturday, Manfred said: “The problems with situations like the one with González and Presinal reinforced our belief that we need to get to a strong random-testing program. Reasonable-cause testing was not workable.”
In 2002, the season after the luggage incident, Presinal was a frequent presence in the Rangers’ locker room. González had joined the Rangers, and Rodriguez was one of his teammates. The Mitchell report said that sign-in records showed that Presinal visited the Rangers’ clubhouse often, and that the club reserved hotel rooms for him on the road.
According to a player on the 2002 Rangers, Presinal was not a presence in the clubhouse but worked with players on stretching exercises and in the batting cages.
“He worked with a lot of the Latino players,” said the player, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “He was a really nice guy, helping guys out. At no times did I ever suspect he was doing anything wrong.”
The player said that Yuri Sucart, the man identified last week as the cousin Rodriguez spoke of when he described his steroid use, was not a trainer.
“He was around with Alex a lot, kind of around the hotel, that sort of thing,” the player said of Sucart. “I had no reason to be suspicious of him.”
That season, the Mitchell report stated, baseball officials decided to have Presinal removed from the Rangers’ ballpark and alerted all other teams about him. According to the report, he was later removed from the
’ clubhouse in Anaheim, Calif.
A former player who was a major leaguer within the last decade said Presinal was known to have worked closely with Rodriguez. That player, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified with anything that could be linked to drug issues, said Presinal began working with Rodriguez when he joined the Rangers in 2001 and worked with him in recent years, too.
As recently as a year ago, Presinal worked with Martínez in the Dominican Republic, when Martínez was still a member of the
. At the time, Mets General Manager
said that Presinal was a legend in the Dominican Republic and “highly, highly respected.”
Minaya said he was not concerned about Martínez’s association with Presinal. But a year later, Presinal’s name is back in the news, linked to Rodriguez, and Major League Baseball is concerned.
Baseball investigators are expected to meet with Rodriguez soon to ask him about his admitted period of drug use. And when they do, Presinal will almost certainly be one of the people brought up for discussion.

The December alert, issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), warned consumers not to purchase or consume 25 products claiming weight loss benefits. Of the 25 products listed in the warning, many are manufactured in or contain ingredients from China or Japan and not deemed compliant with U.S. standards. However, there are many weight management products sold over-the-counter that are compliant and clinically shown to work.
Wayne, NJ (
) January 1, 2009 — The December alert, issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), warned consumers not to purchase or consume 25 products claiming weight loss benefits. Of the 25 products listed in the warning, many are manufactured in or contain ingredients from China or Japan and not deemed compliant with U.S. standards. There are, however, many weight management products sold over-the-counter that are compliant and clinically shown to work. As those struggling with weight resolve to shed unhealthy pounds in the New Year, it is increasingly important to know what to look for before choosing a weight loss aid. Here are some tips to help you determine which diet aid may be right for you.
Many products claim an “ingredient” or “ingredients” that “may help with” or are “demonstrated” to aid in weight loss. Mixing together multiple ingredients can, however, alter the effect of any one ingredient's attributes and result in a less-than-effective diet aid. Look for products with clinical trials conducted on the full formula, such as SlimShots, SlimFast, or Alli. These products' formulas, in their entirety, have been clinically shown to be effective in weight management.
Weight loss, pure and simple, is a result of eating less and burning more calories than you consume. Transitioning from super-sized to right-sized food portions can be made less difficult with the use of an appetite suppressing diet aid. SlimShots, for example, is a stimulant-free appetite controller that has been clinically shown to help users reduce calories up to 30% each day and works for 8-hours. SlimFast, although a meal replacement product, helps to control the appetite for up to 4-hours.
Educate yourself on a product's ingredients and talk with your physician and pharmacist before using any diet aid. Common diet aid ingredients such as Green Tea, Cocoa, and Guarana are stimulants and can cause heart palpitations, jitters, or nervousness. Fiber ingredients like Glucomannan provide a sense of fullness, but that fullness is often described as bloating. Fat blocking products, like Alli, can cause loose, runny, even unpredictable bowel movements when users do not adhere to the strict low-fat diet. In short, it is important to know how the product works, how it may interact with other medications you are taking, and whether the possible side effects are tolerable for you before purchasing or using the product.
Products that appear to give you more for your money are often more expensive. This is due to the dosing requirements for the full benefit of the aid. For example, the suggested retail price on a 30-count box of SlimShots is $39.99 while a 60-count starter kit of Alli costs $49.99. While it appears that Alli provides more for your money, the opposite is true. Here is why: the recommended dosing for SlimShots is 1 time per day while Alli's recommended dosing is 3 times per day. This equates to a 30-count box of SlimShots lasting a full 30-days at a cost of $1.33 per day versus Alli's 60-count starter kit lasting just 20-days at a cost of $2.49 per day.
The key to healthy weight loss and sustained weight management is balance – eating healthier and in the proper portions and burning the calories you ingest. A good guide for a nutritionally balanced diet is the FDA Food Pyramid and exercise can be as simple as spending 15 minutes in the morning and evening jumping rope, taking a brisk walk around the block with your dog, walking through a mall, or even playing tag with your kids.
As you consider losing those unhealthy pounds in the New Year, remember that good quality diet aids can help you accomplish your goals, but changing the lifestyle behaviors that lead to weight gain is ultimately up to you.
For FDA Alert information, see
For information on SlimShots, see
For information on Alli, see
For information on SlimFast, see
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