Art Spander of RealClearSports currently has a piece up concerning Barry Bonds’ status amidst reports of David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez using steroids. Spander feels the public is beginning to evenly spread their disgust towards all steroid users in baseball instead of just focusing on Bonds.

Bonds now is insignificant. We went after him and his silent partner, Greg Anderson, the trainer, so long ago it’s almost ancient history. Mark Fainaru-Wada and his then San Francisco Chronicle colleague Lance Williams left no syringe unturned. We acted like the sky was falling then shrugged.

What’s falling now are other names into place, the latest of those Ortiz and Manny, who in 2004 combined to help the Red Sox win their first World Series in 86 years. And just an aside, you think any of those self-righteous Boston fans would give back the title because like the Bonds homers they yelped about it might be tainted?

Barry Bonds has a different problem. He’s being hounded by the government on charges of perjury, the U.S. claiming he lied under oath when in December 2003 Barry said he never used the stuff.

But the guess is Barry never will come to trial. And who cares anymore. He took his grief.

He was the Lone Ranger, the one who stood alone until it seems there was no room left on the list for all players who were guilty. The line forms to the right.

For the most part, I agree with Spander. Still, I think the only reason people seem to hate Bonds less is because he’s been forced to retreat from the public eye. You never hear about his whereabouts other than when he shows up at a Giants game. And rightfully so. Spander points out that Bonds received the brunt of the blame while Sosa and McGwire received much less. Look, I don’t like any of those three guys, but the main reason Bonds was cast as the scapegoat was because he actively pursued two of baseball’s most prized records. Since Barry Bonds was so jealous, as Spander claims, he used the remainder of his career to surpass Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record. While Sosa and McGwire retired, Bonds stayed in the game for the sole reason of earning the recognition he felt he deserved. That is his greatest sin. He knew the Giants weren’t going to win a championship, but but he cheated his way into the record books while he still could.

When asked recently about his opinions regarding former Boston teammates David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez testing positive for steroids in 2003, Phillies’ pitcher Pedro Martinez shared some interesting answers.

“I’m not going to say anything, because I don’t agree with it. I believe the game should be played clean. They’ve got my total support. They weren’t the only ones. There were a lot of guys.”

“There’s no crying in baseball,” Martinez said. “We won in 2004. That’s it. Are you going to tell me that the other guys, who used it on other teams are now whining? They used it, too. One thing that’s really caught my attention is — why is it all Dominicans? What’s going on? Why is it all Dominicans that all of a sudden come out positive? The last one standing might be me.

“That’s a big question to ask. What’s going on here? Why is it I’m the only one who might be left standing? All of a sudden, they’re going to come up and say: ‘Pedro [did it], too.’ That’s when I’m going to start stripping my clothes off and showing everybody I’ve never had acne on my back. If I did use it, it didn’t help me. They need to give my money back. It didn’t work.”

Martinez raises a great question that most media outlets are afraid to touch: Why are there more Dominican players testing positive for PEDs?

Granted, we don’t know what percentage of the 104 is Dominican and we may never know. But of the seven players whose names have been linked to the media, four are of Dominican descent: Ramirez, Ortiz, Sammy Sosa and Alex Rodriguez. Barry Bonds, Jason Grimsley and David Segui (who was born in the U.S., but his father is Cuban) were the other three names.

It’s an interesting topic and surely something that will gain further attention if the names of more Dominican players are released from that ’03 list.

After news broke yesterday that David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003, I got to thinking, “What’s Curt Schilling’s take on all of this?�

Schilling was part of the 2004 Boston Red Sox team that Ortiz and ManRam helped win a World Series and is a close friend of Big Papi. He was also the one that absolutely lambasted Barry Bonds in a 2007 radio interview when the slugger was on the verge of breaking Hank Aaron’s record with the obvious aid of performance-enhancing drugs.

Schilling said he thinks that Bonds’s achievements during his period of alleged steroid use — as detailed in the book “Game of Shadowsâ€� — should be “wiped out.â€�

“If you get caught using steroids, you should have everything you’ve done in this game wiped out for any period of time that you used it,” Schilling said at the time of the book’s release.” A lot of players, I think, have said as much because it is cheating.”

Now, Schilling did apologize for what he said about Bonds in the interview. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t mean what he said. And if he truly feels that way, I find it interesting that he wasn’t as harsh on Ortiz as he was on Bonds back in ’07.

This is from Schilling’s blog 38pitiches.com (which was posted yesterday) in reaction to Big Papi’s positive test in ’03:

Should any of David’s subsequent accomplishments be judged by this?
That’s for you to decide. It seems to be an area of immense debate, but I am not sure how this could/should/will be resolved. Whatever you do you need to do it for anyone now, and if you do do something, make sure there is some detriment for anyone caught going forward. Given that so many people live on their accomplishments or stats, taking one or both away would be a decent way to deter some guys, I think.

Should any of the Sox’ accomplishments in ‘04 or ‘07 be judged differently because of this?
This makes me laugh. I have already seen the bandwagon fans start the *04 and *07 threads and remarks, people with teams who are far deeper into this than most other teams — as if this makes it all OK. Every team going back 10-15 years needs an * if you want to consider giving it to anyone. The hard part is that it’s turning into a situation where we are seeing every single GREAT player in the past 10 years caught, and they’re dragging what we thought were the majority, and are now turning into the minority, down with them.

Well that’s certainly a more diplomatic approach now isn’t it, Curt?

Look, I get it – Schilling isn’t going to blast his buddy like he did Bonds, nor is he going to say that anything he and the Red Sox accomplished this decade should be stricken from the record books because Big Papi and Manny were on PEDs.

But I’m just wondering what happens if Big Papi says that he didn’t know what he was taking a la Bonds. Will Schilling come out and say the same things as he did in ‘07? If he truly feels that (and I’m using his words here) if you get caught using steroids, you should have everything you’ve done in this game wiped out for any period of time that you used it, then he should say that Big Papi and Manny’s accomplishments should be wiped out as well. (That is, for whatever years they were doping, which of course couldn’t have been in ‘04 when they won a championship right??)

Granted, neither Ortiz nor Ramirez broke a sacred record like Bonds did. But still, wouldn’t it be a little hypocritical of Schilling to voice so boisterously against Bonds and not do it against Ortiz? If Schilling wants to be known as someone who isn’t afraid to speak his mind about steroids in baseball, then he can’t pick and choose whom he blasts. He can’t attack Bonds one year and then essentially give Ortiz a free pass two years later because the two were teammates and friends.

Maybe Schilling is waiting for more details to emerge or for Ortiz to release another statement before he comments further. That’s certainly fair. I’ll wait too. I’ll wait for more details, and I’ll certainly wait for more from Schilling, because more should be coming.

Following the Red Sox win over the A’s on Thursday, David Ortiz addressed the media about a New York Times report that stated he tested positive for performance-enhancing dugs in 2003, although didn’t say much.

“Today I was informed by a reporter that I was on the 2003 list of MLB players to test positive for performance-enhancing substances. This happened right before our game, and the news blindsided me. I said I had no comment because I wanted to get to the bottom of this.

“I want to talk about this situation and I will as soon as I have more answers. In the meantime I want to let you know how I am approaching this situation. One, I have already contacted the Players Association to confirm if this report is true. I have just been told that the report is true. Based on the way I have lived my life, I am surprised to learn I tested positive. Two, I will find out what I tested positive for. And, three, based on whatever I learn, I will share this information with my club and the public. You know me – I will not hide and I will not make excuses.

“I want to thank my family, the Red Sox, my teammates, and the fans for their patience and support.�

So essentially he’s getting ready for the ol’ “spin-a-roo� routine, where he’ll admit to taking “something,� but didn’t know it was a performance-enhancing drug.

“Somebody at sometime in some juncture under some circumstance might have probably given me something at some point,� Ortiz will say.

Big Papi, do us all a favor and just come clean. Say you messed up, you shouldn’t have done it and you’re ashamed. You’ll still be a cheater, but at least some of us will respect you for coming forward. If you sidestep the situation, you’re no better than Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Manny and all the other ass clowns that think they can pull the sheets over our eyes.

Related Stories:

- Report: Big Papi, Manny test positive for PEDs in 2003

According to a report by the New York Times, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003.

Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, the sluggers who propelled the Boston Red Sox to end an 86-year World Series championship drought and to capture another title three years later, were among the roughly 100 Major League Baseball players to test positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003, according to lawyers with knowledge of the results.

The information about Ramirez and Ortiz emerged through interviews with multiple lawyers and others connected to the pending litigation. The lawyers spoke anonymously because the testing information is under seal by a court order. The lawyers did not identify which drugs were detected.

Unlike Ramirez, who recently served a 50-game suspension for violating baseball’s drug policy, Ortiz had not previously been linked to performance-enhancing substances.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone who has followed baseball over the past decade. When Manny was suspended for 50 games for testing positive for a woman’s fertility drug often used to mask the use of steroids, you would have had to been naive to think that he wasn’t on something. And considering Big Papi admitted back in February that he works out at the gym of suspected steroids supplier Angel Presinal, nobody should be surprised that his name is on the ’03 list either.

Bud Selig needs to get with the player’s union immediately and discuss releasing the rest of the names on that list. Ramirez, Ortiz, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Sammy Sosa have already been outed and baseball should just do itself a favor by releasing the rest of the names. Because guess what? The names will come out, whether it’s one at a time, two at a time, etc.

But the union will never allow it. They’ll continue to believe that this situation will eventually go away and that the fans will someday rejoice and call baseball “America’s Game” again. But we won’t. We know the game was tainted for over a decade and the accomplishments of Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Ramirez and Ortiz mean very little because they had help. The union, the owners, the players and everyone else in Major League Baseball is fooling themselves if they believe more names aren’t going to come out.

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- Ortiz issues statement about positive ’03 test

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- THE DAILY BEAST has a funny (but harsh) take on Steve McNair’s murder, claiming that had Saleh Kazemi had followed the “rules” of being a sports mistress, the situation wouldn’t have unfolded like it did.

- DEADSPIN has the surprising news that no one cares that Manny Ramirez used PEDs as Dodgers fans embraced his return to L.A. Thursday night.

- Even though it might seem like a daunting task at this point, BICYCLING.COM writes that Lance Armstrong will pull ahead and win his eighth Tour de France.

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Bud Selig wants a rule changed that allows suspended MLB players to sharpen up in the minor leagues before their suspensions are over. The latest example of this rule came this year when outfielder Manny Ramirez was able to play in the Dodgers’ minor league system before his 50-game suspension for testing positive for a banned substance was up.

“I believe that should be changed,” Selig said Tuesday during a one-hour question-and-answer session with the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. “Their logic was OK — look, guys get hurt, they can go out on rehab, and so on and so forth. But I think that’s something we need to really change in the next labor negotiation.”

The current rules are in place through December 2011. Rob Manfred, baseball’s executive vice president of labor relations, said management will not ask for a rules change before then.
“I’ll let them work that out. I don’t want to do our negotiating here,” Selig said. “But it’s 50 games and then go do what you got to do to get back into [shape].”

For one of the first times in the history of my existence, I actually agree with Bud the Slug.

If a player is suspended, he should have to serve the full length of that suspension before he’s allowed to partake in baseball on the major or minor league level. I was vilified by a couple of readers in this article for criticizing this rule, but it’s amazing how people don’t find a player being allowed to sharpen up in the minors (while they’re suspended mind you) a ridiculous concept. I understand that it’s baseball’s rule, but it’s a dumb freaking rule.

It’s like sending a kid to time out in the corner for 15 minutes, but for the last five minutes, he gets to play with Legos so that he’s ready to get back to building a Lego house with the other kids after his 15 minutes have been served.

I must have missed the memo that stated Manny Ramirez’s suspension was lifted from 50 games to 40.

In case you haven’t heard, Ramirez is getting a fair share of work these days for the Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliates. He was suspended 50 games by MLB for testing positive for performance-chancing drugs, yet apparently it’s fine if he plays in some minor league games in order to get his swing back for when he’s ready to join the big league club again.

Since when is it okay for someone to work during a suspension? Granted, sports will never be confused for everyday jobs, but isn’t this a little ridiculous that Manny (who broke a rule) is allowed to play? If he’s suspended 50 games, he shouldn’t be allowed to play in any league (major, minor or little) until that suspension is completed.

This is a benefit to Ramirez; why is the league helping him out? Oh, you broke a rule, Manny? No problem – we’ll still make sure that you get enough hacks in so that when you come back to the show, you’ll be ready to rake again in no time. Let us know if you need anything else because we’re here to serve you.

Maybe this isn’t that big of a deal and I’m making too much of the situation. But come on, this isn’t like a player coming off the DL who needs a quick rehab (unless they’re counting this as a drug rehab, err, women’s fertility drug rehab) assignment before he sees major league pitching again. This coconut got busted for a positive PED test and as suspended 50 games. So make him serve 50 games.

The Miami doctors who allegedly prescribed Manny Ramirez with hCG are being probed by DEA investigators according to a report by ESPN.com.

Investigators believe the prescription for human chorionic gonadotropin, known as hCG, was written by Pedro Publio Bosch, 71, a physician who has practiced family medicine in Florida since 1976. His son, Anthony Bosch, 45, is believed to have worked as a contact between his father and Ramirez. It’s unclear how far along the DEA is in its inquiry but sources indicated that investigators want to know whether either man ever procured improper or illegal prescriptions for other people. DEA officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Pedro Bosch practices in a medical building located across the street from Coral Gables Hospital in Coral Gables, southwest of Miami.

Bosch, through his attorney, declined to comment. Anthony Bosch could not be reached for comment.

Anthony Bosch is well known in Latin American baseball circles, sources say. His relationships with players date at least from the earlier part of the decade, when he was seen attending parties with players and known to procure tickets to big league ballparks, especially in Boston and New York.

If Anthony Bosch is well known in Latin American baseball circles and hooked up Manny with hCG, then what other ball players has he helped? Hmm…

Breaking his silence for the first time since he was suspended 50 games for testing positive for PEDs, Manny Ramirez told the Los Angeles Times that he vows to “make it up� to the Dodger fans by leading the team “to another level� upon his return.

He also dropped this little ditty in the interview:

“I didn’t kill nobody, I didn’t rape nobody, so that’s it, I’m just going to come and play the game,” Ramirez said.

You know what? I agree with him. He didn’t kill or rape anybody and if he did take steroids, in the grand scheme of things when you really get down to the nuts and bolts of the issue, he only endangered himself.

But the problem is that he was so arrogant reaching this point that nobody has a problem chastising him to no end. He flat out quit on the Red Sox (not just the organization – but an entire team) last year, only to be traded to the Dodgers and be made a hero.

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