I’m writing this to tell you I’m sorry. The people in the Padres organization deserve an explanation. As for the fans in Fort Wayne of the Midwest League, who came to the ballpark every night to cheer me on as I racked up save after save, I owe you all an explanation more than anyone.

Life on the road is damn tough. This ain’t the major leagues. Our team shuttles from dingy town to dingy town in a broken down bus with no air conditioning. We only receive $14 meal allowance per day. If we need a massage from the trainer, we have to wait until he’s finished with the team’s laundry first. The boys stay sane through it all by playing hard on the field and partying harder off the field. After the game, the team heads out to a tavern to drink cheap beer and talk to some pretty ladies. When you’re slogging through the minor league system, not knowing if you’ll ever get called up to the big club, the advances of a local girl that you’ll probably never see again can mean the world to you.

But in my case, I had no such luck. I was a skinny dude with terrible migraines. After the ballgame my migraines would usually act up and I wouldn’t feel like heading out and having fun with the rest of the team. On the few occasions when I felt up to it, the ladies wouldn’t pay any attention to me and I couldn’t blame them. I used to be the guy who stood meekly in a corner watching the girls flock to the muscle-bound corner outfielders. You try explaining what a “save” is to a barely legal blonde girl who’s working on her fifth draft beer. Those girls looked at my skinny frame and they didn’t believe me when I said I was with the team.

There’s a lot more to steroid use than what the papers choose to focus on. Steroids make you stronger, faster, and leaner. And as you surely know, muscle-building enhances blood circulation which does wonders for clearing up migraines. It only took a couple of days for me to notice improvements. Within three weeks, my migraines were completely gone and I was ready to party with the rest of the boys.

Of course, there were other benefits as well. The increased flow of blood also improves the reaction time of signals travelling between the optic nerve and the brain, which gives a huge advantage to us pitchers who must spend hours reviewing the charts every day. At the start of the 2005 season, it took me 90 minutes to review the charts of the opposing team’s batters, but by season’s end, I’d reduced that to only 35 minutes.

And on top of all that, I noticed some on-field benefits. You’re probably wondering why so many pitchers have tested positive for steroids. All the papers say that steroids make you grow big and strong. They say that big muscular guys like Bonds and Giambi needed those steroids in order to hit lots of home runs. That’s established fact, right? I mean, everybody knows all about that stuff. But what about us? What about the relief pitchers who crave those big ninth inning strikeouts the way McGwire craved a ballpark full of flash bulbs every night? Well naturally, we can add a few MPH to our fastballs. Even after my migraines went away, I felt my pitching arm getting stronger. After a couple of months, I had boosted the velocity of my fastball from a middling 91 to a lightning quick 97. Soon, I went on a hot streak of sixteen straight scoreless appearances. I ached for the ball in every crucial late-inning situation, and the more the manager provided me with that fix, the more I was jonesing for it once the next 3-2 game came along. I told the coaches and players in the ‘pen that the sooner they got me in the game, the sooner we’d all be able to hit the bars. If someone else had started to warm up, they usually saw things my way and stepped aside.

Anyway, back to the ladies. After I grew these 19″ guns, the girls didn’t want to talk about short relief. They saw the muscles, and those muscles said “pro athlete” loud and clear. The muscles said “home runs” in a language these dewy-eyed farmers daughters could understand. And let me tell you, I became a jackhammer in the sack. Once upon a time, I used to receive the odd complaint about my performance but once I started with steroids I started batting 1.000. Except that the women I was sleeping with were way hotter than the ones I used to bang, so it was really like batting 2.000. I lost all my shyness around girls and was ready to do it anytime, anywhere. Nothing gets daddy’s little girl feeling naughtier than getting banged in a bathroom stall by a pro athlete while her unsuspecting boyfriend waits for her outside in the car. Before steroids, I never would have known about that. And that’s right, I didn’t care if they had boyfriends or husbands. I’m a ballplayer. You gotta flaunt that shit. One time I met this chick Betty and we did it in the back of her husband’s pickup truck. Her husband was driving the truck at the time. But I wasn’t worried about getting caught, not in the least. I didn’t have a care in the world. Even if he caught us, what was the guy gonna do, beat me up? Hells no. Yeah I did your wife, just grin and bear it, buddy boy. She had great tits too.

So as you can see, there was a lot of incentive for me to keep using drugs. But I’m not making excuses. I knew I was breaking the rules and rolling the dice with my career. I am profoundly sorry for deceiving the good fans of Fort Wayne as well as the beautiful ladies in all the towns throughout the Midwest League. I’m sorry I tricked you all into believing I was accomplishing my feats on nothing but mineral water and my own god-given talents. All I can hope for now is the forgiveness of my teammates, coaches, and of course you ladies and the rest of the fans.

Matthew Varner is a pitching prospect in the San Diego Padres organization. He led the Midwest League in saves in 2005. Earlier this week, he was one of five minor leaguers suspended for testing positive for steroids.