The Legend and the Fall
Behind Thomas’ sentiment is an unambiguous message: Why should I take a bullet for the men who fucked up my legacy? Indeed, if there is one player who has been injured by the indefen­sible choices of PED users, it is Frank Thomas.

In the mid-’90s, Thomas and Seattle’s Ken Griffey Jr. were the kings of the sport, destined to rule well into the early 2000s. Yet within the ensuing couple of years, Thomas started to notice something odd: More and more peers arrived at spring training sprouting muscles atop muscles. Spindly middle infielders looked like Lou Ferrigno. Speedy corner outfielders turned into 30-home run mashers. One player chalked up his 20-pound weight gain to “vitamins.”

“I began thinking that guys were just outworking me,” Thomas says.

By the time McGwire and Sosa were mesmerizing the nation with their 1998 home run battle, Thomas was an afterthought. Though he slugged 29 home runs and drove in 109 runs for the ’98 Sox, he failed to place in the top 20 of AL MVP voting, trailing four players, including winner Juan Gonzalez, who are specifically cited in the Mitchell Report.

That indignity was nothing compared to two years later, when Thomas enjoyed the
best season of his career (a .328 average, 43 home runs, 143 RBI), yet lost out in the MVP voting to, of all people, Giambi. In an emotional press conference, the A’s first baseman cried. “This has been nothing but a fairy tale for me this year,” Giambi told the reporters.

It was all a lie.

“Am I mad about that?” Thomas asks. “Well, I’m upset I didn’t win it that year, but not because of the steroids. I’m upset because I was on a team picked by many to finish fourth in the AL Central and we won the division. That was as good as I’ve ever played, and I should have won. I wasn’t happy about that.”

But what about the steroids? “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “I’m naturally talented. I should beat guys like [Giambi] even if they do use.”

Back on Top
At age 40, Frank Thomas is, if not quite the slugger of yesteryear, still pretty damn good. In 2005, when injuries limited him to 34 games, a .219 average and 12 home runs, he was widely dismissed by the media as a thoroughbred ready for the glue factory. This belief was only heightened when the White Sox won the World Series with their iconic slugger on the bench, then paid $3.5 million to buy out his contract.

With teams showing little interest in an apparently aging, injured, moody has-been, Thomas signed a one-year, $500,000 deal with the A’s. Expectations were minimal, but Thomas exploded, posting 39 home runs and 114 RBI and placing fourth in AL MVP voting.

Following the remarkable comeback season, he was wooed by Toronto GM J. P. Ricciardi. Thomas’ two-year, $18.2 million contract included a $9.12 million signing bonus—the highest in team history. “You’re talking about one of the greatest hitters the game has ever seen,” says Ricciardi, explaining the Jays’ offer. “He still puts fear in opposing pitchers.”

Thomas had a solid 2007 season with the Blue Jays, finishing with 26 home runs and 95 RBI for a team that won 83 games and placed third in the AL East. But perhaps more important, the man with the reputation for sullenness actually became a clubhouse guru. “He’s just a big teddy bear,” says Vernon Wells, Toronto’s star center fielder. “When Frank talks baseball, people listen. He’ll help anybody.”

Though his teddy bear status came into question last April, when he reportedly grumbled about limited playing time and the Blue Jays decided to release him, Thomas’ value was quickly reestablished when he was snatched up four days later, again by the A’s. “Bottom line, it’s a risk worth taking,” A’s GM Billy Beane told reporters. “We had a great year from him [in 2006], and he was a great influence on the club. It would be foolish not to consider it.”

If Thomas seems calm—even indifferent—to those responsible for illegally inflating their own numbers at the expense of his legacy, well, he sort of is. Thomas possesses a perspective lacking in many of his peers, an outlook dating back to his boyhood in Columbus, Georgia. It was Labor Day in 1977 when chubby little Frank, nine years old, noticed that Pamela, his 2½-year-old sister, kept standing up and falling down. “Quit kidding,” he said to his favorite of six siblings. “Just stand up.”

Two months later Pamela Thomas was dead of leukemia. “Death does something to you,” says Thomas. “It’s been a long time, but it was an important lesson about appreciating your life and living for each day. I think of Pamela all the time. Still hurts.”

That pain resurfaced last November when Joe Kennedy, a Blue Jays pitcher and one of Thomas’ closest friends, died suddenly from hypertensive heart disease at age 28. As soon as he heard the news, Thomas and his wife, Megan, flew to Florida to be with Jami Kennedy, Joe’s widow. Over the ensuing weeks, Thomas chartered a plane for the Kennedy family, stayed up nights with Jami, and helped make the funeral arrangements. “He was amazing,” says a friend of the family who requested anonymity. “Frank showed true compassion and generosity when it was needed most.”

In a sense, that’s also what he’s doing in baseball. It would be easy for Thomas to slam Giambi, Sosa, and McGwire, to bitch and whine and insist he deserves more respect than his ethically deprived cohorts. “But I’m not going to do that,” he says. “Right now baseball needs to heal and move on. Maybe some of these guys used because they needed money. Maybe they thought it was OK. I don’t know. But I take pride in how I’ve handled myself and how I’ve done things the right way.”

In fact, Frank Thomas is the model for baseball’s rising drug-free sluggers—Ryan Howard, Prince Fielder, David Wright. “Frank Thomas was the prototype 21st-century hitter before people even knew what the prototype would look like,” says Steve Cannella, a longtime baseball writer. “He took lots of pitches, got on base any way he could, and had an amazing eye. Plus, he’s done it clean.” Perhaps, Frank Thomas’ legacy is stronger today than ever. Perhaps, in the end, he is legendary.