If only MLB listened to FBI Agent Greg Stejskal, back in the 1980s. Perhaps baseball records would not be as tainted as they are today. Perhaps weeks or months could go by without a baseball-steroids story that numbs the minds of fans. But Baseball didn't pay attention, however Bo Schembechler's Michigan Wolverines did.
This report from the Ann Arbor News says that FBI agent Greg Stejskal, whom Bo Schembechler invited to give a presentation on illegal activities to the Blue and Maize football team in 1982, will be ending his association with the University of Michigan. Bo listened, however MLB officials did not.
Geoff Larcom writes:
It was the summer of 1982, when University of Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler called the local FBI office.
Could an agent come over and talk to the team about some of the dangers athletes face in terms of agents, sports bribery and gambling?
Greg Stejskal went, along with senior agent Tom Love. The two walked into a room filled with about 100 football players, plus coaches and trainers. Schembechler walked in, introduced the FBI men and said to listen to their message.
"You could have heard a pin drop,'' Stejskal says now. "We had their undivided attention.''
Stejskal, who played football at the University of Nebraska, took over the annual talk the following year, and has been doing it ever since, for Schembechler, Gary Moeller and now head coach Lloyd Carr. Today marks the 25th and probably final time Stejskal will give the talk. He retired last November after a 31-year career in the FBI.
The FBI-football tie has been an important relationship through the years, with national ramifications. A meeting in 1989 of Stejskal, Schembechler and U-M strength coach Mike Gittleson resulted in the FBI pursuing an investigation into national steroid distribution that grew into what many would call the most successful probe of its kind ever.
Stejskal busted Jose Canseco's steroids dealer. He also knew about Ken Caminiti's source too. The USA Today reported this in 2005. The steroids dealer was Curtis Wenzlaff, who as ESPN documents, fell to an FBI sting in the 1980s. This was the first big bust of pro athletes using PEDs:
After a day of seminars about sports scandals at the FBI's training center in Quantico, Va., Stejskal found himself at a table with other attendees, nursing beers and talking about
their cases. Kevin Hallinan, baseball's chief of security and one of the presenters, was at the table, too. Everyone was talking about work when the subject of Stejskal's investigations into steroid trafficking arose. What the hell, he figured, glancing at the ex-New York City cop. Might as well let Hallinan know what I found.
Stejskal and his partner, Bill Randall (who'd posed undercover as steroid buyer Eddie Schmidt), had been sitting on information that had never been made public. Wenzlaff, it turned out, had been a very helpful witness. He'd talked a blue streak about Jose Canseco and the drugs he'd supplied the slugger. He'd also said he believed Canseco was dealing to other major leaguers...
"We've heard it too, but what can we do?" Stejskal recalls Hallinan saying. "The union won't let us test the players. Our hands are tied."
Despite numerous contacts, Hallinan denies remembering the information. Bud Selig's director of baseball operations, Sandy Alderson -- former Oakland A's GM -- despite having Canseco on his team, and despite the steroid dealer who hung around the Oakland locker room just can't recall any of this stuff too. No wonder MLB finds the sport in a mucked up steroid quagmire.
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Back to the former FBI agent. He retired, and thus gives his last address to the Wolverine football team:
Stejskal led the effort, which among other findings identified the man who distributed steroids to former big-league baseball star Jose Canseco and other players. Stejskal passed that information on to big-league baseball officials in the early '90s, but little came of it.
About 10 years later, in 2005, as the steroid scandal broke and players' use became public knowledge, reporters from The New York Daily News tracked down Stejskal and asked him if he had informed baseball back then.
Yes, Stejskal answered.
Baseball officials fell all over themselves denying his assertion before acknowledging Stejskal might have told them something. The story created a national furor over the FBI agent from Ann Arbor.
The former FBI agent's last Michigan talk is today. His final thoughts (MLB should listen):
Stejskal's bottom line is simple, and will be repeated today.
"Life's tough,'' he says. "But it's tougher if you're stupid.''
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