One of the greatest sluggers in Boston Red Sox history, Mo Vaughn, revealed this week that reports of PED use during his career were, in fact, true.

During a difficult time in Red Sox history, Mo Vaughn was the bright spot in going to Fenway. Before Boston emerged into a baseball dynasty in the early 2000s, the three-time All-Star was the face of a franchise that struggled to compete for playoff spots in the American League throughout the 1990s.

For long-time fans, there is certainly disappointment that Vaughn wasn’t able to be around for the years when the Red Sox were an MLB powerhouse. He missed that period by quite a few seasons when he departed Boston in the 1998 offseason for a six-year, $80 million contract with the then-Anaheim Angels. However, while it hurt Sox fans at the time, the version of Vaughn LA got was a diminished one.

• Mo Vaughn stats (Career): .293 AVG, .383 OBP, .523 SLG, .906 OPS, 328 HR, 1,064 RBI, 861 R

Vaughn suffered a knee and ankle injury in 1999 after falling in the dugout going for a foul ball. Never fully recovering is a major reason why his game quickly declined as he got older. It didn’t help that he lost all of the 2001 season due to a ruptured bicep. He was traded to the New York Mets before the 2002 season in the hopes he could recapture his elite form. However, he was awful and was out of the league two years later.

Further adding to the sad finish to a once outstanding career was his name landing in the infamous 2007 Mitchell Report. It revealed a shocking amount of details of various PED use by players earlier in the decade. Including claims Mo Vaughn used human growth hormone during his time with the Angels. While the MLB great never owned up to the revelation in the years since, he shockingly came clean this week.

Boston Red Sox great Mo Vaughn confirms long-rumored PED use during MLB career

“I was trying to do everything I could,” Vaughn told The Athletic Monday about trying to combat the knee injury suffered in 1999. “But I knew I had a bad, degenerative knee. I was shooting HGH in my knee. Whatever I could do to help the process.”

While there was clear evidence in the Mitchell Report that the Boston Red Sox legend used the performance enhancer, he never confirmed it was true. So, it is still stunning for another player from the 1990s to admit to using PEDs. It seems as though the HGH use was just during his time with the Anaheim Angels and not while he was with the New York Mets.

The saving grace for MLB fans was that Vaughn did not use HGH to boost his stats and performance. Similar to New York Yankees great Andy Petitte, he had a chronic injury that was getting worse. He just wanted to stay on the field and maintain the same level of play up until that point.