Interview: Dan Good

Interview: Dan Good

By Scott Bolohan

In the decades since Ken Caminiti won the 1996 National League MVP award, he’s become all but forgotten. And if he’s remembered, it’s usually for him becoming the first person to admit to using steroids—or his tragic death from an overdose just two years after.

It’s easy to let the tragedies overshadow the tremendous career he had. Dan Good’s book, Playing Through the Pain: Ken Caminiti and the Steroids Confession that Changed Baseball Forever, captures Ken Caminiti as never before. Through meticulous research and stories that bring the greatness of Caminiti to life, the book is also a reminder that he was a beloved teammate and kindhearted human. It recontextualizes the Steroid Era through a person—and all the people that were affected by his decisions.

Where did the idea for the book come from?

As a 1990s baseball fan, I adored the way he played. I just loved his style—he was so gritty. He was imposing. I mean, his nickname was “Scary Man.” What kind of player gets that kind of nickname? That guy was badass. So it really generated from that, getting into baseball cards, getting into SportsCenter highlights and appreciating him that way. One of the aspects that really drew me into his story is that my father passed away when I was 14 in 1997. He had stomach cancer. I was always drawn to the sad, difficult stories of Walter Payton, Payne Stewart, and the athletes who died too young. I really appreciated that Ken came forward and was so honest and open about using steroids in 2002. So his death really stuck with me.

I always really wanted to read a book about him. I felt like there was so much more to this story that hasn’t been told. You see all these books about Mickey Mantle and the 1969 Mets. And you’re like, ‘What about Ken Caminiti, like, this story is insane.’ I was working overnights at the New York Post and I had all this time to kill during the day. So I started researching his life and I realized there’s a book here. In the beginning, I felt like maybe somebody else was writing this book already, or a beat reporter who was handling this or somebody closer to him who had a better grasp of the story. But nothing was happening. So I just started chipping away at this and calling people. I did my first interview in 2013. And it snowballed from there.

On your blog, you wrote, “Loss hangs over this entire project, in little ways and big ways, but exploring loss and sadness offers an appreciation of life.” What was it like reaching out to people around him? Was there resistance?

Yeah. Every single interview, I went into it saying there’s going to be that emotional side of the interview of what it felt like when he passed away. Did they know he had issues? How did they talk to him? As people got closer to him, those conversations were more intense. There was resistance, and some of that resistance continued the entire time I was working on the project. As I peeled back the layers of his life, I understood and respected that resistance and hesitation to participate in a book about him. It’s so complex and difficult because there are so many deep and difficult elements to his story. I completely understand why people would say they didn’t think they were ready to talk. I had people in the Astros front office, friends of his, people who were close to him at different stages of his life saying it was too emotional. And this is almost 15-20 years after his death. I think that says a lot about the feelings people had for him.

There was somebody on Twitter who wrote they bought the book with hesitation. They knew this is going to be a heavy topic. Every single interview I did was a heavy conversation.

I finished reading the book last night, and I basically spent all day today just watching YouTube videos of Ken. I forgot how great have a player he was. It’s his arm that really sticks out.

You’re exactly right. The arm made him stand out. It was basically between him and Shawon Dunston for who had the best infield arm in the league. But I think that his instincts and first steps were so good. That really helped him because he wasn’t super fast. He was a smart baserunner, but he wasn’t fast. As a third baseman, he had such great instincts in reading the ball off the bat, reading the swing and the angle at which he was going to hit the ball. He was dynamite at third base. The hitting came later. His first couple of seasons in the majors, he was still really not established as a switch hitter. He was even debating whether or not to stick with it for three, four years into his Astros career. He worked hard to really feel comfortable as a major league player hitting from both sides of the plate. And obviously, as that comfort level rose, he became a bit of a bigger threat at the plate.

There’s that misnomer about steroids. And obviously, steroids did help him. He’s not the MVP without steroids, don’t get me wrong. But he was an All-Star without steroids. He was a good hitter, a power hitter at times, an RBI machine always driving in runs. In ’96, he had 130 RBIs. He was really great at driving in runs. But third base defense was really the center of his game. I think he derived more pleasure out of making a great play. That really made him proud, even more than probably hitting home runs. He really loves playing third base.

I didn’t realize until reading your book just how damaged his shoulder was in ‘96. That season was only possible for him because of steroids. And yet those steroids almost certainly had a major role in the forthcoming injuries. How do you view that ’96 season now? Do you view it as tainted by steroids?

It’s an interesting question. And it’s an interesting dilemma. Because you know why he’s using steroids. This wasn’t just some guy who said, ‘I want to put up stats.’ Obviously, the stats came, but he was doing it for those reasons. He was doing it to stay on the field. He was doing it to help his team, to stay in the lineup. He was really hurting that first month of the season. He could barely lift his arm. He was really limited. And it’s funny that he won the Gold Glove that year. Obviously, he had these great plays throwing out guys from his butt and other highlights, but he wasn’t a great defensive third baseman, at least compared to some of his earlier years in Houston.

People have told me, ‘Oh, it’s tainted.’ It’s really complicated because if he doesn’t win it, Mike Piazza wins it. And that gets complicated. I’m not necessarily accusing Mike Piazza of using steroids, but other people have. There have been whispers. It’s really complicated. I think there were a lot of things going on and steroids certainly helped. But Ken also had balance in his personal life—he was clean. We’re talking about street drugs, alcohol—he wasn’t using those things. And I think that with his balance, with the way that he was approaching the game coming from a good place, he was balanced on the field. He wasn’t overswinging. He was being more selective about the pitches he was swinging at because of his injury. His injury really forced him to use his legs and I think that helped make him a better player, even limited by his shoulder. But it’s really complicated because if he doesn’t use steroids, he doesn’t play. He ends up using the right mix of things to get him through the year.

When these steroid scandals first popped up, I felt that these records were tainted. I felt that there was this stigma. Anytime one of these players did something— McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, Caminiti, A-Rod—same thing. People are always going to think they cheated. I’ve softened my view on that as years have passed and as I’ve spent more time looking at Ken’s life and his story. It’s a lot more complex than people want it to be. And it’s so easy to think this is tainted, this isn’t tainted. The entire game of baseball was tainted by performance-enhancing drugs in the late 1990s. And some players took advantage of that opportunity. Other players didn’t. Kudos to the players who didn’t, I think that’s a great thing. But I don’t blame players who decided that in order to get that contract, in order to bounce back from injuries. They take these risks and I don’t blame them for that at all.

Ken wasn’t particularly like secretive about his use and his teammates loved him other than maybe Tony Gwynn.

They did love him and the Tony Gwynn thing was interesting. I’m intrigued to see how San Diego fans respond to that chapter. I look at it like a workplace relationship. You know their activities, their patterns, their habits. They grate on you. This person speaks too loudly into their phone, this person chews too loudly when they’re sitting at their desk, this person gets on my nerves. I feel like it was that kind of relationship where they didn’t outwardly dislike each other, they just got tired of each other. So many people from Ken’s playing days and from his connections in baseball knew that he was using steroids and weren’t necessarily overly concerned about it at the time, or if they were, they put those concerns aside. Or they would talk openly about it. Phil Garner was the manager of the Brewers and he’s talking to Ken about it saying, ‘Hey, you know, when I was playing in the late 80s, I was considering using them too, but I decided not to, you need to be careful about this stuff.’ It’s one of those things where he’s not being secretive. Teams are intercepting packages that were sent to him. Players are talking to him openly in the clubhouse or over dinner about using steroids. Players are coming up to him saying, ‘Hey, can you hook me up with the stuff that you’re using?’ It might have been a secret to pockets of players that wanted to keep their heads in the sand or weren’t privy to those conversations. But by and large, it was just out there. He was open to talking about it with whoever wanted to talk to him about it.

There’s another MVP, who had a very similar story in Josh Hamilton. And we’ve almost forgotten about Josh Hamilton. Do you think Ken Caminiti would have fared better today?

I think so. You look at Josh Hamilton. And there were those incidents that happened with him. There was one specific incident where he was with Ian Kinsler. And Ian Kinsler and him went back to their townhouses. But Josh Hamilton went back out. They were done for the night and he went back out. I look at stories like that and this is the stuff that Ken was doing, too. I think that the difference is that there was a better conversation around Josh Hamilton, there was more accountability. There were people from the team that were trying to help him, stay close to him, or keep him on track. There’s certainly that aspect of he’s an adult and he has to make decisions for himself. But I also think that baseball is such a tough career for anybody who’s enduring challenges like this, especially substance abuse challenges. The instinct as a baseball player over the course of a 162-game season is to pop a pill, get back on the field and play. Ken did that really well throughout his career. He was medicating up, he was medicating down. He was medicating to dull the pain with painkillers. You know, he was taking GHB before a game to just mellow out and feel cool and chill and in a good place, which clearly was a bad idea.

But I think that baseball has gotten better in setting up frameworks for players like Josh Hamilton or Ken than they had in place when Ken was playing. It’s such a tough career for somebody like Ken and that’s the shame of it. I go back to like 1994 with the Astros and Andy Stankiewicz is on the team and Andy is rooming with Ken, being close to him and being a good presence for him. He was going out to breakfast with him if he’s up in the morning. There were some really good people around him who were recognizing that he needed a little bit of extra care and attention. They were attentive to that. And then there were other points in time where he had a similar structure, his early days in San Diego. And then some people get traded away, the roster is different, and then you have people on the team who are going out partying with them, doing drugs with them and it’s a bad balance. They tried to help him with the employee assistance program with the Astros a second time there. But there was just too little, too late. There were just too many temptations, too many opportunities, too many bad influences around them, and it was just insurmountable.

It was fascinating reading about the decision to do the Sports Illustrated story. I think when people think about the steroid era, they think about Jose Canseco and Juiced. But Canseco was coming from kind of a place of showmanship almost. And for Ken, I thought it was genuine honesty. What incentive did he have for speaking about steroids?

He wanted to own his truth. He just came out of rehab and he was taught in rehab that the truth will set him free and that he has nothing to hide. And he was an open book, even more so than he had been earlier in his career. When he gets contacted by Jules Bailey with CNN/SI, he’s like, ‘Yeah, let’s, let’s talk, no problem.’

Talking to Jules about it, the sense that she got—and I do agree with her—was that he was interested in letting teams know that he was available, that he was cleaning up his life, that he was in a good place. Whether that meant an opportunity to play again or coach, he was looking for some opportunity in the game. I think ultimately, he was interested in taking the steps to move forward with his life. I think he thought being honest was the way to do so.

Going into the conversation, it didn’t start being about steroids. Obviously, for Jules, there was a focus. But it was a wide-ranging conversation. It focused on his life, career, legacy, and everything. And steroids came up. He spoke his truth about that while also glossing over details and giving cover to some people he could have easily trashed. Then it gets handed to Tom Verducci and the story is all about steroids. Tom touched on other topics of his career, but steroids were the big focus. I think he just decided it’s the truth, so be it. I don’t think he understood the ramifications. I don’t think he understood what was going to happen, the firestorm that would come by any stretch. You’re going to be called a rat by other baseball people and it was really disappointing because some of the people were calling him out, or some of the people were getting steroids from the same place he did. All these players now had a problem with it because he starts talking. But he didn’t name names. He didn’t say a single person.

How should we remember Ken?

I think it’s important to remember Ken as the competitor. I think it’s important to remember Ken as a genuinely good-hearted person, who obviously fell through tough times and had some struggles, demons, and issues. It’s easy to look at the headlines, from steroids to his death, to drug addiction and abuse, to arrests and everything else. But you gloss over all his successes and how hard he worked to get to where he was. I think that’s been lost a little bit. Ultimately, he was a genuinely good-hearted person who gave of himself and gave so much of himself to others, gave his body to this game. He should have focused more on himself, he should have been more selfish. And that really cost him.

It’s interesting, because after all these years, after all these interviews, I still carry so much respect for him. I went into the saying this goes one of two ways. I look at A-Rod and as a Rangers fan, I don’t like A-Rod. I haven’t for a long time. I look at the way he operates, his phoniness in life. And it seems like he’s done well for himself. That’s great. But I look at the way he operates. He always feels like he’s like trying to present something. When I started this project, I would have hated writing a book about somebody like A-Rod. I would have hated having to find this fake sense of connection to them. I still have so much respect for Ken. I still have so much admiration for him. You wish this ending would have turned out differently for him, that he would have had that redemption story. I hope this book can be a little piece of a redemption story for him, in the sense that people can have more understanding and compassion for who he was and the impact he had in the world. But it’s tough because we all know how it ended. There are not a lot of good things to take away from that. But I see him as a genuine person and ultimate competitor, a good friend and somebody who so many people had so many nice things to talk about.

Dan Good‘s book, Playing Through the Pain is available now.

Jason David Córdova lives in Puerto Rico as an illustrator and painter. Some of his art can be seen on Instagram at @jasoni72.

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