by Matt Saldaña
December 19, 2007
Four years ago, the Durham Bulls swept the Pawtucket Red Sox to become back-to-back International League champions, a feat that hadn't been accomplished in more than 10 years in Triple-A baseball.
But at least two Bulls players on the 2003 championship team purchased performance-enhancing drugs either shortly after or before that season, according to a scathing, 400-page report by retired U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell on the widespread use of illegal, performance-enhancing drugs in Major and Minor League Baseball.
Of the 89 Major League Baseball players named in the report, 11 passed through Durham.
One month after the Bulls' Jim Parque pitched Game Two of the Paw Sox series—giving up three runs over six innings—he wrote a $3,200 check to Kirk Radomski, the former Mets clubhouse attendant and the investigation's key informant. Radomski said with that check, and a subsequent payment of $1,600, Parque bought two supplies of human growth hormone.
[View the entire article at the Independent Weekly.]