ampersand wrote:I'm not saying there is such a thing as karma. But I find it interest the only guy who actually admit to taking steroids, aka Alex Rodriguez, actually had a much more successful weekend than David Ortiz did.
"Admitted" is a pretty strong word. I'd say he did something more like "qualify his statements." Everything was "but I only did it until 2003. I only did it with the Rangers. I was lying to myself." And that whole line about a clear conscience? It's steroids. Nobody was fixing games. Nobody was hurting anyone but themselves and some personal records. Also: until Rodriguez' name was discovered on the list, he was a denier too. He "admitted it" when he was caught.
Perspective: if any of us still watch the NFL, let's admit it: we stopped caring about steroids years and years ago. Because, well, to say the NFL doesn't have a steroid problem when the average lineman weighs more than Shaq and runs faster than anyone we know, that would be asinine. Baseball and the Olympic Games are the only sporting events where taking steroids warrants anything more than a slap on the wrist.
Fact is, we'll probably never know the truth. What we do know is this is a more confusing issue than it was made out to be to begin with (104 names became 96 and then became 83, and nobody knows exactly what those tests were for). I wish Ortiz had handled all this better, but who knows? The one thing I wish he had done in his press conference was acknowledge that whether what he said was an excuse or the truth, very few people are ready to believe any ballplayer in his situation. But to be fair to both Rodriguez and Ortiz, since testing with penalties has started, both of them have regularly been tested (like all MLB players) and neither was suspended for any period of time.
ampersand wrote:Hey, Boston. Maybe you should be more worried that Tampa Bay might pass you on by for the Wild Card?
Meh. "Worried" is a strong word. A friend pointed something out to me the other day: until at least 2017, no Sox fan has a right to complain about the standing of our team. That'd just be greedy. That isn't to say this last week didn't infuriate me at a few times--of course it did. But, shit, what are we going to do? Blame Ortiz for not holding his press conference earlier? (Who the Hell knows--maybe he really was looking for answers. Maybe not. But I'll note that even in all this, media and the union and the rest of baseball is stumbling over itself to back Ortiz up. Not that it's helping.) No Red Sox fan should get on David Ortiz for anything right now. Leaked name or none, what he did in Boston
still happened and can't really un-happen, so we can't really blame Ortiz. The starting pitching has been good--Beckett and Lester were great this weekend, Buchholz gave all he had and kept his game close, Wakefield's going to come off the DL right when the weather starts to get colder and the wind starts blowing again--and we can't exactly blame the manager or GM since Francona and Epstein are easily the best at their positions in the franchise's last, oh, 90 or so years of baseball.
This last week, they weren't only not good enough to win the division but they don't look like a playoff team. Fortunately, it's early August as opposed to late September. Injuries will have time to heal, the outrage on steroid guys expires after three weeks unless they're Barry Bonds, and there's always the waiver wire.
Tampa Bay's a surging team and a great team. Honestly, so long as the Sox play better than they have this week, if they miss the playoffs because Tampa Bay and New York simply outplayed them, well, here's a thought: the last time Boston missed the playoffs, they won the World Series the next season. It's not like Francona's job would be in danger, or like they wouldn't be able to sign free agents.
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Final thoughts on Ortiz' name being on that list of 104, which is actually only 96...wait, 83...wait, whatever the players' union said.
-Apparently the nice guy routine Ortiz has been putting on for years has worked. The only people upset about his name on the list--and the only ones who don't believe his story--are fans. The union is behind him, every player or manager that they ask about it seems to be behind him...even when he gave a story that might be hard to believe, Ortiz had more people in his corner than Alex Rodriguez. Maybe that "not being a prick" thing works.
-Barry Bonds. Alex Rodriguez. Ken Caminiti. Jason Giambi. ...Steroids ever help those guys come through in the "clutch?" Didn't think so. Steroids give you the ability to hit the ball a long way, but being a clutch player requires more than steroids. Or, to put it another way, until Ortiz and Ramirez, how many of the accused ever won rings? Sosa? Nothing. Canseco and McGwire needed each other and a Hall of Famer in Rickey Henderson to win the big one. If steroids are what made Ortiz so "clutch," I guess Rodriguez and Bonds and the like were doing it wrong...
-And come on: how surprised can we even be by this? LOOK at the guy! Really, there are maybe ten significant players during the steroid era that would surprise me to be on a list: Pedro Martinez, Derek Jeter, Ken Griffey Jr, Kenny Lofton, Greg Maddux, Ichiro Suzuki, Tim Wakefield, Tom Glavine, Jamie Moyer, and Omar Vizquel. That's about it. Anybody else would be less than surprising. And I felt that way before the season started by the way.
