Porter Fischer may not be a name or face that you can recall off the top of your head, but Alex Rodriguez and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred sure can.
It was Fischer, a lifelong Miami resident who loved a good tanning bed and quick ways to get in better shape, who took down Tony Bosch’s Biogenesis clinic that was supplying many MLB players with steroids, including A-Rod.
Fischer’s story is a large part of famed documentary maker Billy Corben’s latest film, “Screwball”, which opened in select theaters nationwide last Friday and is available on VOD (Amazon, iTunes, etc) starting today. The documentary dives deep into the Biogeneis steroid scandal that led to the suspension of A-Rod, a person Fischer has never met.
But A-Rod is a person who Fischer has some strong feelings about.
“I told Billy that A-Rod’s gotta be a talented baseball player, to have that bat speed and coming up the way he did,” Fischer told For The Win. “But socially and for the fans the guy’s gotta be an (expletive) because he keeps lying to their face.”
“Screwball” does a really good job of showing all the ways A-Rod lied about taking PEDs, including how he originally reached out to Bosch after seeing the success Manny Ramirez was having with Bosch’s program.
If you’re unaware of Fischer’s story, let’s dive into it: He started as a patient of Bosch’s, who he thought was a licensed doctor (he wasn’t). After having success losing weight and gaining muscle by using the programs Bosch gave to him, he wanted to do some marketing for the company. Bosch, who had a penchant for partying and cocaine, had Fischer invest $4,000 into the company, saying he would pay him back and then some later down the road.
But Fischer was eventually unable to get that money back from Bosch so he took matters into his own hands by walking away with Bosch’s patient files, which included names like Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun.
Fischer told For The Win what it was like to flip through those pages and see the names:
“When I saw (A-Rod) on that page, he’s the top one — it says A-Rod, ” he said. “And then it says Melky (Cabrera). And then it says Ryan Braun. And then all of the sudden you go, ‘Oh (expletive)’ and start flipping backwards you’ll see ‘Alex A.’ ‘A. Rodriguez’ and then you’ll start seeing ‘A-Rod’. Then you wanted to start digging through the papers to see what jumps out at you. Next to some of the names, like Ryan Braun, you think he only appears once, he appears a couple of times.”
There were also young high school players names on the files, too, which was something that didn’t sit well with Fischer.
“I probably could have let the baseball players slide, I probably could have let Tony slide,” Fischer said. “But when you see kids are getting injected with garage-made steroids — I don’t know how else to say it, but isn’t that child abuse? I think it is. And I was like OK, at end of the day I can’t let that go so screw (Tony). I wanted the law to throw the book at him but they didn’t because MLB needed him.”
Fischer was afraid of having the files at his home so he brought them to a storage unit near his dad’s house a few hours north of Miami. He also made copies of them and would later share those with a reporter from the Miami New Times that he worked with on a story that would break this whole thing wide open.
But on March 24 of 2013 Fischer had the files stolen from his car while he was in a tanning salon.
That break-in became a serious investigation both by the police and by MLB, led by now-MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, who had been trying to get those files from Fischer before they were stolen.
Eventually the Miami New Times story broke and led to Braun’s 65-game suspension, A-Rod’s 211-game suspension and 12 other players being suspended. Bosch was also sentenced to just under three years in jail.
Fischer feared for his life during those days back in 2013, and still does, as he said he sometimes carries a gun for safety.
“I’ve never drawn a gun on anybody,” Fischer said. “I’ve never shot at anybody. So if I pulled it I’d probably drop it. Maybe it’s all in my head but it’s one of those thing where stuff usually happens when you don’t expect it.”
As for A-Rod, Fischer would love to see him help with Fischer’s non-profit, the Porter Project, which aims to help kids stay away from PEDs.
“I personally think (A-Rod’s) done a great job of reinventing himself but one of the best things he could ever do is turn around and walk up to me and say, ‘Let me help you talk to kids about how steroids shouldn’t be the way to go,’ ” he said. “But I just don’t think Alex is legitimate or has the integrity to do it, to be honest. I think there would always be some sort of angle, there will be some kind of distrust.”
