Friday, February 15, 2013

Ex-Sox Trainer May Have Broken MA State Law

Reinold With Youk
According to an article by Jeff Passan of YAHOO! Sports, former Red Sox trainer Mike Reinold may have violated Massachusetts state law by injecting Red Sox players with the legal pain-killer Toradol. State law prohibits anyone but a doctor administering such treatments. Multiple sources—one being Curt Schilling—told Passan of "Reinold jabbing a needle into a player's buttocks before a game". In fact, Schilling himself admitted, "I had a Toradol shot almost every single game for the last 10 years of my career. It was never administered by a doctor at home or on the road. I didn't think it was wrong." Schilling said, however, that Reinold never injected him with Toradol. When confronted by Passan with this information, Reinold responded, "Every medical treatment I provided was under the direction, authority and knowledge of a team physician and appropriately documented. Any suggestion to the contrary would be false." Dr. Thomas Gill—the Sox medical director at the time of MLB's investigation into these issues—denied giving Reinold orders to inject players with Toradol. The MLB investigation concluded with no real decisions or sanctions—save a written statement that trainers cannot administer the drug from now on. While Reinold was fired after the 2012 season, there are rumblings that the team might bring him back as a consultant. You may recall that many fingered Reinold as the "staff member" who suggested to Schilling that he take PEDs. That subsequent MLB investigation found no fault on Reinold's behalf.