Baseball's Own "Florida Man"

It’s become a fun routine to check the news for “Florida Man” stories. It’s more of a meme than anything. These are odd, often embarrassing news events centered on real people in Florida. Here are a couple of my favorite headlines:

“Florida Man in ‘No, Seriously, I have drugs” T-Shirt Arrested for Possession of Drugs”

 “Florida Man Gets Tired of Waiting at Hospital, Steals Ambulance, Drives Home” 

“Florida Man denies Drinking and Driving, Says He only Swigged Bourbon at Stop Signs”

 Nothing personifies the spirit of “Florida Man” more aptly than the Biogenesis scandal that took down Alex Rodriquez and further bloodied the MLB.

I saw a documentary that explained the whole fiasco. It's called Screwball because the story plays out in a zany ridiculous way. It’s one of those times when you lose faith in people and start thinking everyone is working an angle. The director Billy Corben had a lot of fun with it. He used kids in the dramatic recreations to give it a light hearted  slap-sticky feel.

Tony Bosch had a small time clinic in Coral Gables for weight loss and hormone replacement therapy. He was a glorified prescription writer operating under the radar but with a veneer of respectability. His father was a physician listed as the medical director and his signature was needed for the scrips. Tony Bosch goes to great lengths to explain to us (the audience) that he is a ‘real’ doctor, just not licensed for Florida. His dodgy demeanor seeps through like sweat on a cotton shirt. He isn’t Al Capone though. He’s more like “Dr. Nick” the infamous quack from the Simpsons.

His business runs along pretty smooth until he gives advice to some weight lifters on how to get on a cycle of steroids. The connection to sports and athletes begins in that bar. From there he meets Manny Ramirez, puts him on a schedule with strict instructions not to alter the plan. But Manny being Manny alters the plan.

He gets caught on a random test. Ramirez gets suspended while Dr. Bosch disappears for a while and stays away from baseball. He expands his regular Florida business with equally dubious tanning salon guys (think Jersey Shore) that own a string of buildings across Miami. One of the regular customers of the salon, Porter Fischer, becomes a customer of Tony Bosch and even loans Biogenesis some money. Porter is quite naive about the whole operation. He believes the clinic and Tony Bosch are on the level. His investment is a measly $4000 but Tony never repays, despite the constant badgering from Porter.

Porter steals some of Tony’s records to teach him a lesson, including the A-rod notebooks that show him as a paying customer. To think this entire fiasco could have been avoided if the good Dr. would have paid back the 4 grand, it’s almost unbelievable.

Porter clearly didn’t know what he’d done. He is referred to a few times as a sucker in the film but “sucker” doesn’t quite capture it. He ran afoul of some dangerous people and didn’t realize it until very late in the game. His smartest move was going to the local press. After he shows the books to a reporter there is nothing stopping the tsunami of lawsuits and theft, blackmail and legal wrangling. Lucky for Porter this group of misfits wasn’t quite ‘mob’ enough to take him out. Once the story hit the national press he stood a better chance of staying alive.

 It’s the ultimate “Florida Man” news story that snowballs into a media blitz involving celebrities, Major League Baseball and the FBI. All because a sleazy doc selling growth hormone to retirees refused to pay back a measly 4 grand. No one looks good in this.

Alex Rodriguez is an especially loathsome character. He actually hired protesters to hold up supportive signs and shout good will to him as he entered the courthouse in his challenge to the MLB. How did he pay them? With pizza.

I’ve only skimmed it here. The unfolding mess of a story is too good to be fiction. It must be Florida.