According to former Boston infielder Lou Merloni, the Red Sox taught players how to use steroids safely.

“I’m in spring training, and I got an 8:30-9:00 meeting in the morning,” said Merloni, who was in the Red Sox minor-league system from 1996-97 and played in the big leagues with them from 1998-2002.

“And I walk into that office, and this happened while I was with the Boston Red Sox before this last regime, I’m sitting in the meeting. There’s a doctor up there and he’s talking about steroids, and everyone was like ‘Here we go, we’re gonna sit here and get the whole thing — they’re bad for you.’ No. He spins it and says ‘You know what, if you take steroids and sit on the couch all winter long, you can actually get stronger than someone who works out clean, if you’re going to take steroids, one cycle won’t hurt you, abusing steroids it will.’ He sat there for one hour and told us how to properly use steroids while I’m with the Boston Red Sox, sitting there with the rest of the organization, and after this I said ‘What the heck was that?’ And everybody on the team was like ‘What was that?’ And the response we got was ‘Well, we know guys are taking it, so we want to make sure they’re taking it the right way’… Where did that come from? That didn’t come from the Players Association.”

Merloni said he couldn’t remember the name of the doctor or what year the meeting took place. Boston’s general manager at the time, Dan Duquette, adamantly denied the accusations to Boston.com.

“It’s ridiculous. It’s totally unfounded,” Duquette said. “Who was the doctor? Tell me who the doctor is? If there was such a doctor he wasn’t in the employ of the Red Sox. We brought in doctors to educate the players on the major-league drug policy at the time at the recommendation of Major League Baseball. This is so ridiculous I hate to even respond to it.”

Merloni couldn’t even remember the year that the meeting took place (you’d think he could pinpoint when a meeting like that would take place), so it’s hard to believe what he claims. It’s also a little surprising that a former player would share that kind of information unless it was for some kind of personal gain.

But don’t forget that John Rocker also claimed that a doctor was hired by the MLBPA to instruct A-Rod, Ivan Rodriguez and Rafael Palmeiro on how to properly use steroids after a spring training lecture in 2002.

Granted, Rocker was a freaking nut, but the same was said about Jose Canseco, who looks a little saner these days.