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Former American League MVP Mo Vaughn has admitted for the first time that he used human growth hormone (HGH) during his career in Major League Baseball. Vaughn was one of 89 players that was accused of using performance-enhancing drugs in the 2007 Mitchell Report.
“I was trying to do everything I could,” Mo Vaughn, a three-time All-Star, told The Athletic in a new interview. “I knew I had a bad, degenerative knee. I was shooting HGH in my knee. Whatever I could do to help the process.”
Toward the end of his career, Vaughn was so desperate to keep playing that he turned to human growth hormone. The Mitchell Report, summoned by former commissioner Bud Selig in 2007 to detail the illegal use of steroids and other performance enhancing substances by major-league players, offered evidence that Vaughn made three separate purchases of HGH in 2001. Vaughn, who did not consent to an interview for the report with former U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell of Maine, confirmed to The Athletic that he used HGH.
Former Mets batboy and clubhouse employee Kirk Radomski, who supplied numerous players listed in the Mitchell Report with steroids, claimed “he did not sell Vaughn steroids because Vaughn was ‘afraid of the big needles.'” That’s why Mo Vaughn used HGH. The needles were smaller.
Interestingly, Major League Baseball actually didn’t ban human growth hormone until 2005. Mo Vaughn had already retired after the 2003 season, but he says being named in the report didn’t make him bitter. “That had nothing to do with where my pain was coming from,” Vaughn said.
“It was so difficult for him because he wasn’t ready to leave the game. And he hadn’t accomplished what he wanted to accomplish. And he was angry,” Vaughn’s wife Gail said.
Vaughn, who won the 1995 AL MVP Award and finished in the top five of MVP voting in 1996 and 1998, batted .293 and hit 328 home runs during his 12-year MLB career. Despite winning the MVP in 1995, his 1996 and 1998 seasons were arguably his best statistically. He batted .326 with 44 home runs and 143 RBI in 1996, and in 1998 he had a .337 batting average with 40 home runs and 115 RBI.