Leaner Giambi speaks up

TAMPA -- Noticeably trimmer to Joe Torre and most everyone else at Yankees camp, Jason Giambi explained that better eating habits and hard workouts had left him leaner. He emphasized one more thing: Steroids had never been a part of his diet.

Giambi said he'd lost 4 pounds, down to 228, during the offseason by cutting back on fast foods and doing extensive rehab from knee surgery. When he stood at his locker yesterday at Legends Field, his chest, biceps, and legs appeared smaller -- enough so that many people did a double-take when they first saw him. "My weight is almost exactly the same," he said. "Just cleaning it up and losing some of that excess body fat I had."Giambi and new teammate Gary Sheffield both testified Dec. 11 before a grand jury probing the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, a company accused of providing steroids to sports stars. Being subpoenaed did not mean an athlete was a target of the investigation, which was focused on possible drug and tax violations by BALCO. Asked yesterday whether he had taken performance-enhancing drugs, Giambi said: "Are you talking about steroids? No."

Giambi said he did not know BALCO founder Victor Conte and said he welcomed the commissioner's office testing players this season.

"Hopefully, everything is going to be fine," he said. "This has really shed a different light on everything."

"Evidently, it's not going to go away," Torre said. "I hope we can get through it. You have to sit back and wait and see if anything else comes out."