Undercover Report Links MLB Players To PEDs

Taylor Teagarden caught on video admitting to PED use. Photo by Keith Allison

Al Jazeera, whose vision states “To be recognized as the world’s leading and most trusted media network, reaching people no matter who or where they are,” is facing a credibility test over a documentary ‘The Dark Side’ which aired on their site of an undercover report making claims of linking professional athletes to performance enhancing drugs.

The report sent British hurdler Liam Collins undercover and documents him meeting with a guy named Charlie Sly, who supposedly was an intern with a pharmacy with claims that he previously worked for the Guyer Institute.

The allegations are caught on video discussing how the athletes took the banned substances, with three players implicated from the MLB, Taylor Teagarden, Ryan Howard and Ryan Zimmerman.

Teagarden is actually the only MLB player seen in the video discussing the drugs he took and what it did  for him, but neither Howard nor Zimmerman are anywhere in the video and have denied all allegations.

Teagarden played with four organizations, playing more than 60 games in one season and mostly as a part-time player.

Prior to the documentary airing, MLB didn’t have any knowledge of any allegations, and through an official statement they plan on doing their own thorough investigation.

MLB Trade Rumors received a statement from the attorney for both Howard and Zimmerman:

“It’s inexcusable and irresponsible that Al Jazeera would provide a platform and broadcast outright lies about Mr. Howard and Mr. Zimmerman. The extraordinarily reckless claims made against our clients in this report are completely false and rely on a source who has already recanted his claims.  We will go to court to hold Al Jazeera and other responsible parties accountable for smearing our clients’ good names.”

On Monday, ESPN reported that Sly spoke with the network’s own Chris Mortensen and in part of his discussion he indicated:

“I drove with Liam to Houston and then to Dallas. During the road trip …. he was really pressing me with a lot of questions, and I was dishing out a lot of disinformation. He kept on pressing me on naming athletes I worked with. He said it was very important so he could feel confident sending his European athletes over. I just started to tell him disinformation stories about athletes. None of it was true.”

“I obviously did not know that I was being secretly recorded.”

So at the end of the day, the only MLB player to be caught in the documentary as actually taking the performance enhancing drugs was Teagarden, but if ratings was the main reason to air the piece, it may have done the station more harm than the good it was hoping to receive.

David Conde

David is the Co-Founder and Executive Editor of Legends On Deck®, as well as a Co-Host on Legends On Deck Podcast. David was a Senior Editor for MetsMerizedOnline.com, MetsMinors.net and Contributor for Hardballchat.com that spanned from 2010 to 2014. David made his MLB Debut as a writer in June 2014, while covering the NY Mets at Citi Field, for MetsmerizedOnline.com. David also coaches baseball for ages 13-15, a Babe Ruth League team in his local community. David's passion is coaching the game he loves to the future Legends of Tomorrow as well as making available a website that people can have fun sharing and reading. David is also passionate about his career as a Mortgage Loan Officer which allows him to help many families reach their dreams of owning a home. Connect with David via his Social Media pages as he loves to chat all about baseball.