TAMPA – In the middle of playing catch yesterday morning, Jason Giambi felt an arm on his shoulder and turned to see Joe Torre. For the next five minutes, Torre proved why players revere the future Hall of Fame manager.
Since Giambi arrived in spring training, he has been on the back page thanks to his testifying before a grand jury in December about the BALCO steroid case. He showed up leaner and was laughed at by many when he said he shed only four pounds from his 232-pound frame.
Last Saturday he was informed that Major League Baseball banned Bobby Alejo, his personal strength and conditioning guru, from the weight room, clubhouse and team charter. Giambi awoke Tuesday to reports that Gary Anderson, Barry Bonds’ personal trainer, had given Gary Sheffield, Giambi and Bonds steroids. And Giambi is learning what he can and can’t do on a surgically repaired left knee that caused him to hit a career-low .250 last season.
“[Joe] asked me if I was OK,” Giambi told The Post. “That’s what makes him such a great manager, because he communicates so well. It wasn’t anything long. He just wanted to check with me and then we talked about hitting and what we want to do about playing time during the first week of the [exhibition] season.”
Giambi puts on a good front, saying he’s not worried about how the BALCO case turns out. He also said he believes the Alejo situation eventually will be resolved. But Torre is very good at reading his players and felt a need to take Giambi’s temperature in a relaxed setting.
“We talked, obviously about dealing with what he has to deal with,” Torre told The Post. “When he talked it was basically about hitting and when I talked it was, ‘We will get through this thing.’ It’s not going to go away, he is going to deal with it and fight [his] way through it. I didn’t ask any other questions, obviously.”
Giambi said he appreciated the interest.
“He is the type of manager you want to play for,” Giambi said. “You can ask him any question. The best part is that you are going to get an honest answer back.”
Giambi has internalized the BALCO affair; he hasn’t discussed it at any length with teammates or family.
“I haven’t talked about it with him,” Jeremy Giambi, who testified to the grand jury, told The Post in Vero Beach yesterday. “Right now it’s all speculation. I have no comment on it. At the time if it needs to be talked about I will have a comment for it. Right now I have no comment.”
While Torre couldn’t make the steroid issue vanish from Giambi’s landscape, the first baseman said the talk helped. However, that’s not the only pothole Giambi has to navigate. And it doesn’t look as if the Alejo matter is going to get resolved any time soon.
Giambi, who is working out with Alejo away from Legends Field, is staying mum on that topic, too, hoping it can be worked out between GM Brian Cashman and agent Arn Tellem. However, Cashman didn’t paint an optimistic picture, saying he hasn’t discussed re-hiring Alejo as a BP pitcher like he did to circumvent MLB’s edict of two years ago.
“Right now that’s nothing I am pursuing,” Cashman said. “In this case I don’t have an option. If I do something like that, there will be a lot more requests to hire others.”
According to Cashman, Giambi isn’t happy about MLB’s plan to ban personal trainers from team facilities.
“I had a brief discussion and told him there is not much I can do,” Cashman said. “I don’t think he is all that pleased, but we are all trying to adjust to the commissioner right now.”
With Mark Hale in Vero Beach
