Steve Buckley of The Boston Herald thinks that fans will just have to deal with the fact that some of these players may not have known what substances they were actually taking in the past. Since the players might have been in the dark, the fans will never get answers.
In what continues to be a complicated issue in which facts and innuendo collide, creating an awkward, interpretative truth, it comes down to this: Anybody with an interest in baseball, from fans and media to industry employees and the players themselves, is forced, in the end, to make a judgment call about all this.
It’s a little like viewing an abstract painting: What you see, what you feel, may be far different from what the person standing next to you is seeing, feeling.
And so it is with David Ortiz.
But perhaps some Yankees – and some of Big Papi’s teammates – viewed the entire scene from afar, wondering if their name will be the next released.
It’s the world in which the players now live.
It’s the world in which anyone who follows baseball now lives.
I hate all this pussyfooting. If a player took a supplement that “may or may not have contained steroids,” I view the issue in the same light as just doing the real drugs. It’s like finding a paper bag full of money hidden in a bush. You know that money is there under shaky circumstances, but you might take it anyway and walk away with an unexpected payday. Still, it’s not kosher. These players knew they were getting into some risky business when they walked into these “stores” or “doctor’s offices” and are willing to feign ignorance.
Find a picture of David Ortiz from the height of his career. Now look at Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, and Alex Rodriguez from theirs. Now go find a photo of Hank Aaron from any point of his career. Case closed.
If guys like David Ortiz really cared about “keeping it clean,” they would have made sure the substance didn’t contain a steroid. Whatever he was taking, it allowed him to put up bloated numbers that he’ll never again be able to replicate. To me, that’s evidence enough. I hope I’m proven wrong. Then again, like most real baseball fans, I take the last 15 years of the game with a grain of salt.
Hank Aaron never hit over 50 home runs in a season. However, he did hit 755 in his career, but none of them went over 500 ft. into impossible territory. I don’t think too much about the suspicion surrounding Ortiz because I already know the answer. None of those guys were for real.
