The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven by Aaron Skirboll

Author:Aaron Skirboll [Skirboll Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-56976-766-5
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2011-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

BECAUSE OF his sports expertise and former beat as Pittsburgh Press baseball reporter, it was assumed that Dan Donovan had an astute eye for identifying players. And when Donovan was sent to the federal courthouse to accompany fellow Press reporter Toni Locy he seemed up for the task. Silently, however, he worried whether he would be able to put names to all the faces he encountered on the reporters’ seventh-floor stakeout. Donovan was expecting to see a parade of B-list players and knew it was one thing to be able to point out, for instance, the backup catcher for the Astros during a game, with the benefit of a numbered jersey, but it was quite another thing to pick him out inside a federal building wearing a suit and tie. Inwardly he feared that he wouldn’t be able to do any better than Locy at identifying players.

Donovan realized that his fears were moot when assuredly A-list players Dave Parker and Montreal Expos base path thief Tim Raines arrived at the courthouse in February 1985. Also testifying that month were the Pirates’ John Milner and Lee Lacy. In March these four were followed by St. Louis Cardinals All-Star Lonnie Smith, Houston Astros captain Enos Cabell, and former League MVP Keith Hernandez. The Pittsburgh courthouse was beginning to look like an All-Star Game batting practice. But despite their presence at the grand jury, the players continued to publicly deny any wrongdoing, and they were seemingly always backed by their team’s managers or executives.

“Who? Enos?” Houston Astros president Al Rosen scoffed at the suggestion that Cabell used drugs. “Absolutely not,” Rosen said.

Even when players were willing to tell the public the truth about their drug use, they were urged by team management to word their admissions with utmost care, as was the case with Lonnie Smith. Smith was approached by management before going in front of the press to speak about his rehab visit of 1983. “They told me that I had become a ‘chemical dependent,’ “ Smith says, explaining that the phrase was emphatically preferred over “just telling them I was on cocaine.”

With the April 22 testimonies of former Phillies and current Pirates pitcher Al Holland and San Francisco Giants outfielder Jeffrey Leonard, the number of players at the grand jury grew to at least twelve.

On May 14 Shelby Greer made a statement to agents Craig and Morrison. Word had gotten back to him that his pal Dave Parker had already talked, so Greer decided to try to help himself. Still, even after Parker had turned his back on Greer, Greer held no ill will toward Parker. “I guess I can understand—he had a whole lot more to lose than I did,” Greer says.

Wells Morrison points out that the stars weren’t given much of a choice. “I don’t think the ballplayers—no one wanted to give up some drug dealers who they considered their friends,” he says. “They just didn’t want to be exposed themselves.”

By this time the FBI had gained a good

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