"To Giambi, his story is about overcoming the tumor that all but incapacitated him last summer. If he were tempted to use steroids now, he said, he would be a fool to give in. "Trust me, there is no way, no possible way," Giambi said this week, over two interviews about his comeback. "I've gotten to this point because I'm healthy. There's no chance I'm going to take a chance on doing anything. There's no way."
But Giambi, who has been tested this season, told the news media before the 2004 season that he had never taken steroids. It was later reported that he had said the opposite a few months earlier, before the grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.
All that was before his ordeal last summer, however, an ordeal that he said had changed his outlook on life and baseball. Giambi played only 80 games in a season ruined by a benign pituitary tumor. He finished with a .208 batting average and 12 home runs, and that was all fans could see.
"A lot of people blew it off and said he's not sick, he just wasn't playing well," said Yankees pitcher Tanyon Sturtze, perhaps Giambi's closest friend on the team.
"We're all happy for him, and I think he's probably happy he's playing well when so many people talked so poorly about him last year. Now he's able to do the things he's doing."
Giambi said he was not enjoying this season more because he was proving critics wrong. His success, including a major league-best .451 on-base percentage, is sweet to him because he is healthy and hitting.
"Let's be honest, there aren't people falling over dying from everything else," Giambi said, making a careful comparison between steroid use and his struggle with the tumor. "I don't really want to get into it, but people are playing and functioning and doing stuff.
"Everybody saw me when I walked into the clubhouse last year. I was a mess. That's not caused by one thing. I was sick. That's what I knew I needed to battle back from - just get healthy and be right, just be me." "
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/sports/baseball/07giambi.html?hp&ex=1123387200&en=d1a659888d0207b3&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Giambi was the AL's Player of the Month in July. His average is now .292! Awesome!! 14 HRs!!
In July: Giambi also led American League batsmen with a .974 slugging percentage, .524 on-base percentage and 74 total bases while batting 355 for the month.
