A Baseball Career Without Steroids

Sal Fasano refused performance-enhancing drugs and watched rivals grow bigger -- and richer. But, he asks, who's the real ballplayer?

A Tough Decision

There was, once, temptation. The year was 2000, and Salvatore Frank Fasano was a struggling major-league baseball player batting .214 as a reserve catcher with the Oakland Athletics. All around him, he saw players suddenly, well, growing. Bigger. Stronger. More powerful. They had left at the end of the '99 season with pretzel-thin arms and twiggy legs, then returned as members of some sort of Incredible Hulk tribute band. Fasano, meanwhile, was as lumpy and fleshy as ever -- a saggy belly, water- balloon triceps, a mashed-potato physique. "In this game, people notice how you look," says Brian Johnson, a former major-league catcher. "Sal didn't look too good."

So it was that Fasano found himself on the phone with his younger brother Mike, a former professional power lifter who knew a thing or two about the effectiveness of performance-enhancing drugs. "I never used, but they were all over the sport," says Mike. "Well, there was this guy in the gym where I was working out who was selling this undetectable steroid that made people really big."

Ever since Fasano was selected by Kansas City in the 37th round of the 1993 June amateur draft, friends and family members have watched in dismay as he's been bypassed and overlooked. The routine became mind-numbingly familiar: Fasano would put up great minor-league numbers, sniff a promotion -- and then hear that another player was getting the nod. "It frustrated Sal, but it really frustrated me," says Mike. "All I wanted was for him to get a legitimate shot." Hence, the phone call:

Mike: "Sal, I think you really should consider taking stuff."

Sal: "I just don't know …"

Mike: "Look around you. I know a lot of guys are doing it -- it's obvious. Why not make yourself better?"

Sal: "It doesn't seem right."

Mike: "Right? You can be either a mediocre player or a great player. You can make either $200,000 a year or $10 million a year."

For the ensuing couple of minutes, Sal Fasano thought about it. Really, really thought about it. He grew up in Hanover Park, Illinois, dreaming of one day reaching the major leagues. While other kids were chasing girls or hanging out on the corner, Sal could be found at the nearest sandlot, his clothes coated in dirt, his smile as wide as Lake Michigan. He was nine years old the first time he picked up a bat. When he heard of this thing called Little League, he begged his parents to sign him up. To Vincenzo and Nella Fasano, fresh-off-the-boat Italian immigrants from Calabria, if their little Sammy (as Sal was nicknamed) needed to partake in this odd ritual with a stick of wood, so be it.

"My first team was the Hanover Park Braves," he says. "The very first game I ever played in, I hit a home run." Fasano had watched his father work as a carpenter, his mother as a custodian. As he honed his skills on the baseball diamond, he began to crave the golden ring -- the fame and fortune that accompanied major-league success. He wanted … the dream.

Sal: "Mike, ten years from now, I'm gonna have to look at myself in the mirror, and I'm gonna ask myself whether I did it the right way. I might be a fool, but I have to be true to myself."

And that was that.

Eight years later, Fasano is here, sitting at a table inside Bethlehem Brew Works in Pennsylvania, picking over a slab of grilled chicken with his right hand and twirling a canister of Copenhagen in his left. He is a large man, six-two, 265 pounds, with brown eyes, puffy lips, and cheeks coated by three-day-old scruff. In a couple of hours, he will report to nearby Coca-Cola Park, where he will sit on the bench and chew tobacco as his Richmond Braves take on the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs in a remarkably unremarkable Triple-A baseball game. He is, at 36, a backup minor-league catcher, traveling via bus from one small town to another, lodging in Comfort Inns and Howard Johnsons, playing before small crowds in poorly lit stadiums and spreading out the allotted $20-per-day meal money on Burger King breakfasts and KFC lunches.

The Broken Heart of Baseball

Ever since Fasano made the decision not to use steroids, his life has been a Crash Davis-esque ode to the hypnotic, dizzying lure our national pastime has on its participants. His career transactions read this way: On May 22, 2001, the Royals purchased Fasano's contract from the A's. On June 24, 2001, he was traded by the Royals to the Rockies. On December 21, 2001, he was granted free agency by the Rockies. On January 11, 2002, he was signed as a free agent by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. On June 1, 2002, he was released by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. On June 6, 2002, he was signed by the Milwaukee Brewers. On July 31, 2002, he was traded by the Brewers to the Anaheim Angels. On November 5, 2002 -- after tearing the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow -- he was released by the Angels.

Fasano missed all of 2003 recovering from the injury, then on January 14, 2004, was signed as a free agent by the New York Yankees. On October 15, 2004, after having been assured by the Yankees that he would be called up from Triple-A, he was instead released. On December 16, 2004, he was signed by the Baltimore Orioles. On December 1, 2005, he was signed by the Philadelphia Phillies. On July 26, 2006, he was traded to the Yankees. On January 17, 2007, he was signed by the Toronto Blue Jays. On April 4, 2008, he was signed by the Atlanta Braves. That's why he's here, in Bethlehem, a member of their top farm club.

All told, since being drafted out of the University of Evansville, Fasano has played for 23 minor- and major-league teams. He boasts a grand total of 1,063 big-league at bats (compared with 2,595 in the minors), with 131 hits, 47 home runs, 134 RBIs, and a .219 batting average. He leads the league in broken heartedness.

"A disappointment," he says glumly. "My career has been a really big disappointment." Maybe so. But wherever you travel across the baseball universe, Fasano is beloved. Oakland slugger Frank Thomas, a sure-shot Hall of Famer, calls him "one of the great guys to ever play." Brian Johnson, who beat out Fasano for the Royals' backup catching gig in 2000, says, "Sal is one of those people you can't help but respect." He is the type who rarely complains, who signs autographs for hours, who habitually arrives early to the ballpark -- and then is the last to leave. "Sal doesn't see the bad in anyone," says Kerri Fasano, his wife. "He goes out of his way to see the good." With Richmond, Fasano has been asked to mentor Clint Sammons, the Braves' 25-year-old hotshot catching prospect. Clint, try this. Clint, you might wanna consider that. A glorious job it is not, yet Fasano approaches the task with a professor's seriousness. "At its core, I love playing baseball," he says. "That's why I'm here -- the joy."

But as his career comes toward an end, Fasano finds himself decreasingly joyful, increasingly angry. When, last December, Major League Baseball released its now infamous Mitchell Report, Fasano couldn't help noticing that of the 89 players identified as alleged steroid or drug users, nine were catchers. With the exception of All-Stars Paul Lo Duca, Todd Hundley, and Benito Santiago, the backstops named all seemed to be down-in-the-dirt grinders, the type of guys who bounced from team to team, hoping to catch on. What they lacked in natural gifts, the men appeared to make up for in grittiness. Bobby Estalella, Gary Bennett, Gregg Zaun, Tim Laker, Cody McKay, and Todd Pratt might not hit 20 home runs, but they would play hard, mentor young pitchers, do whatever it takes. Or so it seemed.

"Here's the thing that's troubling," says Fasano. "Every one of those guys went into most seasons as a free agent, just as I did. So we were all battling for the same jobs, trying to land the same spots." He pauses, measuring his words. Though he's not visibly agitated, frustration tails each sentence. In 2001, the Rockies kept Bennett and released Fasano. This past spring, the Blue Jays kept Zaun and released Fasano. How many others -- those who slipped past Mitchell's digging -- have unfairly cost him major-league jobs as well? Five? Ten? Fifteen? "I'll never know," he says.

This is his living. His life. Back home in Minooka, Illinois, his wife and three young children watch every dollar so that Fasano -- who's making $60,000 -- can continue to extend his career. "It's hard for me to justify what those guys did when I've had to work twice as hard as they did just to get a job," he says. "That's why I'm still playing here in Triple-A while a lot of those guys are either retired and financially secure or playing in the majors and getting paid big-league guarantees."

And yet, despite the setbacks, he refuses to walk away. Part of the staying power is based on life's harsh reality. Last September, Fasano's son Santo was born with hypoplastic heart syndrome, a condition in which the left side of the heart is underdeveloped. Following two open-heart surgeries, Santo is doing wonderfully. "But," says Fasano, "we've had more than $1 million in medical bills. Without the baseball insurance policy …"

He stops himself. Yes, the insurance is important. But other jobs offer health coverage too. During most off-seasons, Fasano has supplemented his baseball income with blue-collar jobs. At first he worked for a local company, Wizard of Windows, cleaning blinds. More recently he did excavating work with his father-in-law. "I love putting in a hard day's labor," he says. "But …"

But Fasano can't get baseball out of his system. The game is who he is. It's why he wakes up every morning, why he goes to sleep content each night. Fasano loves pulling the catcher's mask over his face. He loves squatting behind home plate, rubbing his fingers in the loose dirt, calling for a fastball low and away. He loves the dugout banter, turning to a teammate and saying, "You see that slider? That thing was sick."

Fasano still talks of the dream -- of being called up to Atlanta and helping the Braves win a World Series -- but that's what baseball players are required to say in order to justify themselves. Truth be told, the dream is right here in front of him, on the varnished wood table of a mediocre Lehigh Valley brewpub, in the form of a piece of paper that lists his name and uniform number (25) beneath the words Richmond Braves Roster.

Those who opted to turn to performance-enhancing drugs may well drive Mercedeses and BMWs, may well live in luxurious homes, may well boast gaudy career statistics that elicit oohs and aahs from adoring fans.

But Sal Fasano, 36 and tired, is blessed with something a thousand times greater. He is a ballplayer. A real ballplayer.