Mafia Techniques Being Tried Out in Major League Baseball

Bernie Carbo (right)



Ordered Keith Hernandez’s ‘Arms Broken’

Posted by Brooks on May. 13, 2010

In a recent ESPN Outside The Lines interview, 1975 Boston Red Sox World Series hero Bernie Carbo claimed that he tried to have Keith Hernandez’s “arms broken” a decade after his W.S. heroics.

On Sept. 6, 1985, Hernandez testified under oath in a Pittsburgh courtroom that Carbo had first introduced him to cocaine.

Carbo’s response to Hernandez’s testimony was:

"I knew some people, and I had $2,000, and I asked them to break his arms. He said, ‘We’ll do it in two or three years if you want it done, but we’re not going to do it today, Bernie. If we went and broke his legs today, or broke his arms, you don’t think they would understand that you are the one that had it done?"

There’s no follow-up on why those “people” never carried out Carbo’s order. Though from Carbo’s description of his atonishing level of drug use, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

According to Carbo:

I was addicted to the point where I couldn’t play without the drugs. Nobody did as many drugs as I did. I was taking mescaline. I was taking cocaine. Crystal meth. Smoking dope and taking pills and drinking. I felt that even though I hit this home run and I reached a place in my life that I dreamed about, it didn’t bring me any happiness.

Last month Carbo told the BOSTON GLOBE that he was given “vitamins” by Cincinnati Reds trainers in the ’70s that turned out to be speed.

As we excoriate MLBers for taking PEDs, Carbo’s account makes you wonder potentially how many current baseball Hall of Famers were taking hard drugs as PEDs in the years before more sophisticated PEDs and the accompanying drug testing.

We know now that Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter while on LSD, so why not a bump of coke before an at-bat?

Nothing would surprise me. Doesn’t matter the era, players will always try to game the game however they can. From Carbo’s account, we now know hard drugs are included.

The Commissioner of Major League Baseball, when asked to comment, said MLB, like any other business had to change with the times and adopt new policies to give the fans some real excitement. People are simply tired of seeing guys hit baseballs that other guys throw at them. Baseball has become stale, antiquated. Bernie Carbo was trying to save the game. He's likely to receive a special award from MLB for his innovative approach to dispute resolution.