TAMPA, Fla. — Over and over, Alex Rodriguez blamed himself, using the phrase "young and stupid" as he tried again to explain where he went wrong.

"Amateur hour," he called it.

The slugger who might someday become baseball's all-time home run king remembered more details about performance-enhancing drugs Tuesday, saying his cousin repeatedly injected him from 2001-03 with a mysterious substance from the Dominican Republic.

"I didn't think they were steroids," the New York Yankees star said. Later, he admitted, "I knew we weren't taking Tic Tacs."

Making his second public attempt to explain a 2003 positive drug test while with Texas, baseball's highest-paid player described a clumsy scheme in which a cousin persuaded him to use "boli" — a substance he said the cousin obtained without a prescription and without consulting doctors or trainers.

Rodriguez said the cousin, whom he wouldn't identify, told him it would cause a "dramatic energy boost."

Yet, when asked to explain why the secrecy if he didn't think it was an illegal substance, Rodriguez revealed he had a pretty good idea he was doing wrong.

"Look, for a week here I've been looking at people to blame," he said, "and I keep looking at myself at the end of the day."

Some, including Yankees radio broadcaster Suzyn Waldman, had trouble believing him.

"Do I believe that Alex Rodriguez, who won't have a Snickers bar or a cookie, let his cousin inject him with something that he didn't know what it was? I find that really hard to believe," she told WCBS radio in New York, the team's flagship station.

She wasn't alone.

"I wonder if his cousin even existed," Kansas City pitcher John Bale said. "That was my first thought. Is his cousin made up?"

Rodriguez's assembled teammates gave him the eye, especially when he turned to them to apologize and to offer thanks for their support.

Rodriguez paused for 37 seconds, searching for the right words. He looked side to side, blinked several times, bit his lip and took a sip of water. Only then did he finally look up to face captain Derek Jeter & Co.

"Thank you."

Jeter sat with his arms crossed, joined in the front row by Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada. More than 20 players in all were there, along with manager Joe Girardi, general manager Brian Cashman and co-chairman Hank Steinbrenner.

Posada left during the question-and-answer session as Rodriguez offered new details. Other players filed out when the news conference ended and quickly went to their cars without speaking with reporters.

"If this is Humpty Dumpty, we've got to put him back together again, to get back up on the wall," Cashman said.

Rodriguez was the third Yankees player in five years to hold a drug-related, apology-filled news conference, following Jason Giambi (2005) and Pettitte (last year). Cashman said the confessionals should serve as a deterrent when viewed by young players.

"This public bloodletting of individual stars, the fallen stars, anybody who witnesses what these individuals have to go through after the fact, say, 'You know what? I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be in the chair, I don't want to be the one — the poster child for the problem with the game, and on every newspaper across the country and every talk show."