A former New York Yankee teammate of Robinson Cano, recently suspended for 80 games after testing positive for a masking agent used to hide performance-enhancing drug use and anabolic steroids, has come out and stated – rather emphatically – that he isn’t surprised at all Cano was juicing, and doesn’t believe anyone else that played with him is surprised, either.
Mark Teixeira enjoyed a 14 year career in Major League Baseball (MLB), playing for a number of teams but most recently playing for the New York Yankees with Robinson Cano. A slugger himself (playing first base but brought to the Yankees for his offense of pop), Teixeira stated that he knew that Cano was juicing while he was playing with him between 2009 and 2013 and isn’t at all shocked that Cano popped positive for these masking agents.
Somewhat surprisingly, however, is the fact that Teixeira went on to state that he isn’t the only person from the New York Yankees that new Cano was juicing as far back as 2009. He seemed to throw his former general manager, Brian Cashman (who remains the GM of the Yankees today), right under the bus – saying that Cashman definitely knew Cano was juicing and wouldn’t be surprised by this announcement, either.
Teixeira went on to say “I definitely don’t want to dive too much into all the individual details. I love Robbie as a person and a player, but I’m definitely not surprised.” Teixeira continued, “I don’t want to get anyone else in trouble, but I’m pretty sure that there are a lot of people (from the Yankees) that would say the exact same thing. Cashman had to sort of catch himself in an interview just a handful of days ago (regarding the Cano suspension), but I definitely wouldn’t say that I’m surprised by the news.”
Teixeira elaborated a bit more. He went on to say that professional athletes just sort of have a “six sense” about who is juicing and who isn’t, which isn’t all that surprising considering just how much time these athletes spend with one another over the course of a 162 game season (not counting the playoffs).
Teixeira said he never saw Cano use steroids with his own two eyes, but it was just the kind of thing he could see based off of the performance that Cano was enjoying (seemingly out of nowhere when he first came to the Yankees) and inferred that he would be using anabolic steroids because of the people that he was hanging around with.
“You definitely know who is juicing, that’s for sure,” Teixeira stated. “I mean, this is what we are doing to earn our living. You get to see guys when they are rookies, when they are young, and then you get to see how they develop. As a ballplayer, you just kind of understand who’s doing what – especially in a locker room as tight as ours. Over half of the guys that popped positive don’t surprise me, though sometimes you see someone that gets hit with a PED suspension and you are a little bit taken aback. That definitely wasn’t the case with Robbie,” he said.
Cano has stated a number of times that he wasn’t using performance-enhancing drugs at all, but was instead using a prescription grade medication given to him by a medical doctor in the Dominican Republic for a medical ailment that he refuses to disclose. Cano has been quite vague when dancing around this article ailment, leading some to speculate that it isn’t anywhere near the truth.
Teixeira himself isn’t buying the cover story. He has suggested that Cano is probably using steroids and PEDs from the Biogenesis of America “longevity clinic” – just like many of Teixeira’s friends and former teammates used to in the past.
Cano has been teammates with a number of people that had been suspended for performance-enhancing drug use in the past, including Nelson Cruz, Melky Cabrera, and Alex Rodriguez.
Carroll, C. May 18, 2018. Mark Teixeira ‘Not Surprised’ About Former Teammate Robinson Cano’s Suspension. Retrieved from: https://www.si.com/mlb/2018/05/18/mark-teixeira-robinson-canos-ped-ban
