JEREMY GIAMBI, a former Major League Baseball outfielder and first baseman who helped the Oakland A’s end a playoff drought, has died at age 47, his agent, Joel Wolfe, said today.
Giambi spent six seasons in MLB from 1998-2003 but had his best success alongside older brother Jason with the A’s, who reached the 2000 and 2001 playoffs with the siblings after missing out for seven seasons, the longest gap since the team arrived in California from Kansas City in 1968.
A Los Angeles coroner was expected to determine a cause of death for Jeremy Giambi, who died on Wednesday in Southern California.
“We are heartbroken to learn of the passing of a member of our Green and Gold family,” the A’s said in a statement.
Giambi helped California State Fullerton win the 1995 College World Series and was taken by the Kansas City Royals in the 1996 MLB Draft, making his MLB debut with the Royals in 1998 before joining Oakland in 2000.
“We stand with the baseball world in mourning the loss of Jeremy Giambi,” the Royals said in a statement.
Giambi also played for Philadelphia in 2002 and the Boston Red Sox in 2003, finishing his career with 52 home runs, 209 runs batted in and a .263 average.
In March 2005, Giambi told the Kansas City Star that he had taken anabolic steroids and in 2007, the Mitchell Report investigating doping in MLB said he was among the athletes who purchased steroids from BALCO as part of a doping scandal that tainted MLB, athletics and other sports.
