After the BALCO steroids scandal broke in California, the New York Daily News threw its sports I-team at doping in sports. (I is for investigative, of course.)
Screencap from TheBringer2009 on YouTube"Sugar" Shane Mosley
The team has broken some big stories: An insiders' account of a 1990s-era drug probe that pointed to slugger Mark McGwire as a juicer. Scoops on pitcher Roger Clemens’ estranged trainer and his collection of drug syringes, allegedly encrusted with the Rocket’s DNA.
And although none of its writers have been sentenced to prison, the News’ I-team has endured some fierce heat.
Most recently it came from New York lawyer Judd Burstein, who represents boxing champion "Sugar" Shane Mosley in a libel lawsuit against Victor Conte, BALCO’s erstwhile proprietor and a confessed steroid dealer.
Unhappy with a blog post about the case by the I-team’s Nathaniel Vinton, Burstein teed off in an e-mail to the Boxingscene.com website.
In it, he called the mild-mannered reporter “a recognized shill for Victor Conte and writer of one-sided and dishonest articles.”
But Burstein was just getting started. “There are only two rational explanations for Vinton’s conduct,” Burstein continued. “Conte is paying him with money or for sex.”
And, in a email to the writer himself, the lawyer was tougher and more personal still:
"Nate, there will come a day when I have an opportunity to do serious harm to your career," Burstein wrote. "You may not know at the time that it was me, but when you end up with your job lost and reputation destroyed, I (will) call to tell you it was me."
The underlying dispute stems from Conte’s penchant for exposing athletes to whom he allegedly sold designer steroids during his years at BALCO, a drug lab in a strip mall near the San Francisco International Airport.
In a proposed tell-all book, Conte was set to detail how he allegedly provided undetectable steroids to Mosley, the World Boxing Association welterweight super champion. Conte claimed he gave Mosley the drugs before a 2003 championship fight with Oscar De La Hoya. Mosley won in 12 rounds.
Mosley acknowledges being a BALCO customer, but he says Conte promised him that the substances he was being provided were legal non-steroids. So the boxer hired Burstein. Burstein is formidable. To fend him off, Conte’s publisher at one point offered to allow Mosley to write several pages of Conte’s book. When Mosley decline and persisted in his libel suit, the publisher killed Conte’s book entirely.
Conte, resentful, gave interviews to Vinton and other reporters, claiming Mosley knew he was taking banned drugs. Last week, on Youtube, Conte posted a portion of Mosley’s video deposition from the lawsuit. In the clip, the champ seemingly acknowledged that Conte had provided him with EPO, the blood doping drug.
Vinton wrote about it. Burstein, enraged, responded by attacking the writer.
If you write tough stories, you have to have a thick hide.
This week Vinton was back on the steroid beat, with a story pegged to Mosley's May 1 fight against Floyd Mayweather. In it, he accused Mosley of trying to spin his way out of the BALCO drug controversy.
"Maybe boxer 'Sugar' Shane Mosley is trying to change his nickname to 'sugarcoat,'” Vinton wrote.
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