Former Red Sox infielder Lou Merloni has caused a bit of a storm lately with comments that the Red Sox taught players how to use steroids. This is a hot topic in Boston because former Red Sox outfielder Manny Ramirez failed a performance-enhancing drug test while with the Dodgers. Merloni, an analyst on Comcast's "The Baseball Show," had this to say Saturday: "I'm in spring training, and I got an 8:30-9:00 meeting in the morning," said Merloni, who was in the Red Sox minor-league system from 1996-97 and played in the big leagues with them from 1998-2002. "And I walk into that office, and this happened while I was with the Boston Red Sox before this last regime, I'm sitting in the meeting. There's a doctor up there and he's talking about steroids, and everyone was like 'Here we go, we're gonna sit here and get the whole thing -- they're bad for you.' No. He spins it and says 'You know what, if you take steroids and sit on the couch all winter long, you can actually get stronger than someone who works out clean, if you're going to take steroids, one cycle won't hurt you, abusing steroids it will.' He sat there for one hour and told us how to properly use steroids while I'm with the Boston Red Sox, sitting there with the rest of the organization, and after this I said 'What the heck was that?' And everybody on the team was like 'What was that?' And the response we got was 'Well, we know guys are taking it, so we want to make sure they're taking it the right way'... Where did that come from? That didn't come from the Players Association." Merloni said he couldn't remember the name of the doctor or what year the meeting took place. Boston's general manager at the time, Dan Duquette, adamantly denied the accusations to Boston.com.
