Sounds like this is going to get really ugly. The former Red Sox clubhouse attendant who charged his superior with sexual molestation has now alleged that he also was ordered to buy drugs for Dennis Eckersley, as well as Oil Can Boyd and Sammy Stewart. The following is from ESPN.com:
[quote]
Former major league pitcher Dennis Eckersley has been identified by a chief investigator in a sexual abuse case against a former Red Sox clubhouse manager as one of several Boston players who allegedly asked clubhouse attendants to obtain drugs for them.
In a story published in Sunday's Boston Globe, special agent Al Danna of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said a clubhouse attendant who accused Donald J. Fitzpatrick of sexually molesting him also stated that Eckersley asked him to buy marijuana for him.
Eckersley pitched for the Red Sox from 1978-84 and again in 1998, prior to his retirement from baseball.
The allegation appears in an investigative file that was released Friday by the Polk County state attorney's office in Bartow, Fla., after Fitzpatrick pleaded guilty to four counts of attempted sexual battery on children under 12. Fitzpatrick either hired the children as clubhouse attendants or was entrusted to care for them by a relative of former Red Sox pitcher Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd.
"When he was 13 years of age, working with the Red Sox, his primary job was to buy drugs for the players while they were in spring training," one of the victims said, according to an investigative report of his sworn statement to Danna. "He would buy pot for pitcher Dennis Eckersley. He advised that Eckersley would give him $250 and tell him to buy an ounce, then keep what's left over."
In the Globe story, Eckersley said he did not remember any such incident.
"I don't recall anything from over 20 years ago," he told the newspaper. "That's what I'm sticking to."
Eckersley, considered a strong candidate for the Hall of Fame because of his success first as a starting pitcher and then as a relief pitcher, has acknowledged in the past that he had a drinking problem that hampered his career. But he has never publicly stated that he used drugs.
"And I don't plan on doing it right now, especially over allegations from over 20 years ago," Eckersley was quoted as saying in the Globe story. "What good comes of it? They can say whatever they want at this point. It doesn't really matter."
Danna said at least one of Fitzpatrick's victims told him he was asked by Boyd, who pitched for the Red Sox for eight seasons in the 1980s, and by pitcher Sammy Stewart, a member of the team in 1986, to buy cocaine for them at the club's spring training headquarters in Winter Haven, Fla., and in Boston. Danna said the former clubhouse attendant told him that when he was in Boston, he bought the cocaine in Chelsea and delivered it to the players.
Florida prosecutors did not pursue the drug revelations, largely because the statute of limitations had long expired on the alleged crimes, Wayne M. Durden, the assistant Florida state attorney in Polk County who handled the Fitzpatrick case, told the Globe.
Boyd and Stewart could not be reached by the Globe on Saturday.
The drug allegations surfaced during a two-month criminal investigation by Florida authorities that began late last year, sparked by a $3.15 million lawsuit against Fitzpatrick and the Red Sox. The suit alleges that Fitzpatrick molested at least seven young boys over a period of 14 years after enlisting them to help at the team's spring training complex in Winter Haven.
However, they could tarnish the Red Sox's reputation and complicate the team's defense in the pending civil suit if victims' lawyers make a case that team officials looked the other way when it came to the boys Fitzpatrick hired.
"With all of this stuff going on, the Red Sox are going to have a very tough time proving they didn't know what was happening in the clubhouse with these kids," said Daryl Parks, lawyer for Leeronnie Ogletree, a plaintiff in the civil suit.
Team officials declined to comment when reached Saturday by the Globe. But the Red Sox lawyer in the case, Daniel L. Goldberg, has previously denied team officials knew of Fitzpatrick's behavior with the boys he recruited.