The Chargers had been duped. They had been advised what they were ingesting was a nutritional supplement. Unknowingly, they were feeding a steroid into their systems. The steroid era in sports was beginning.
“We started it, for sure,” said Ron Mix.
They did it altogether innocently, as Mix tells it. I was there. I can attest that Mix's account is an accurate one. This was 1963. The place was an outcrop amid the rocks and sand of the San Diego County backcountry known as Rough Acres Ranch, where Sid Gillman had determined that the Chargers should do preseason penance for having experienced a 4-10 season in 1962.
To Rough Acres, Gillman brought the late Alvin Roy, a jaunty individual from Louisiana who would serve as the team's strength and conditioning coach. Roy had been a student of Russian weightlifting techniques.
“I still remember the first meeting we had with Roy,” Mix said. “He said that during the time he had spent with the Russian Olympic team, he had learned from the Russkies that athletes needed more protein.
“These pills will help you assimilate more protein,” he told us. And that was the only thing we were told about what we were to take.”
Gillman termed them “pink pills.”
“We had to take a pill with every meal,” Mix said. “You could take a handful, if you wanted. They were available in the dining hall in cereal bowls.”
In 1963, professional football teams were not into weightlifting, but it was a part of Roy's regimens. Anabolic steroids limit the volume in a person's stool. Through exercise, those taking steroids can turn this waste into muscle.
I decided I would lift some weights in order that I could write a story about how working with weights was transforming me. Gillman cautioned me not to take the pills. I did not. I also did not do much weightlifting, which you would know if you could see me.
For several weeks, by Mix's account, the Chargers took the pills. “But then Dave Kocourek suffered an injury, and he went to a personal physician for a second opinion on it,” Mix said. “The physician asked him a standard question, 'What type of medications are you taking?' and Dave told him about taking the pills.
“The physician was shocked. He said, 'Did they tell you about what some of the effects can be?' On his desk, he had a bottle labeled 'DANGEROUS' with the warning, 'Not to be taken over an established period of time.' It was dianabol, a steroid.”
Mix would learn that being involved with a steroid can cause damage to the heart, liver and kidneys and can cause bone loss and a shrinking of the testes. After Kocourek had shared with him what his physician had advised him, Mix said he summoned a team meeting, urged his teammates to cease taking the pills and no longer took them himself.
“Some continued,” Mix said. “It's too attractive a thing. They work.”
Coming down from Rough Acres Ranch, the Chargers would hit through an 11-3 regular season and go on to claim an American Football League championship with a 51-10 conquest of the then Boston Patriots in a championship game at Balboa Stadium. It is the only league championship the San Diego franchise has won.
That the players had taken steroids had no bearing on their success, Mix said. “If you don't take them continuously, you don't get a benefit,” the Hall of Fame former offensive tackle said.
An attorney, Mix's practice is based solely on pursuing workmen's compensation claims for former professional athletes. His view of the Mitchell Report:
“It has every indication of being a whitewash. Mitchell is on the board of the Boston Red Sox.
“After issuing his report, he concluded that there should be no punishment. It just smells bad. There absolutely should be punishment. It should be heavy. If it isn't heavy, what is the message?”
Mix was asked what in his thinking the result would be should the NFL be subjected to a study similar to the Mitchell Report. “I suspect there are many abuses (of steroids),” he said. “It's kind of hard to resist.”
On another point, Mix champions improving the pension benefits for former NFL players. Former football players, he said, receive an average pension of an annual $12,000. The average pension for baseball players, according to Mix, is $36,000.
“Right now,” he said, “the pension for football players is horrific.”
Jerry Magee: (619) 293-1830; jerry.magee@uniontrib.com
