David Ortiz Watch, Cont’d (Or: Justice is Done)
Posted on July 30th, 2009 in Uncategorized | 15 Comments »
I’m running to dinner, so I can’t write much now, but…
He’s a doper all right.
Asked about the 2003 drug test on Thursday in Boston, Ortiz shrugged. “I’m not talking about that anymore,” he said. “I have no comment.”
I look forward to reading the apologies of all the commenters who mocked, insulted, and reviled me for saying so.
More later. For now, I’m just enjoying being right.
Oh, there is one other thing: Can someone please find out what Skip Gates was doing in China and who paid for the limo?
(I’m thinking I’m on a roll here….)
15 Responses
7/30/2009 6:16 pm
Ortiz’ statement:
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.
7/30/2009 7:05 pm
I have to confess, this makes me sad. Although I’m not a Red Sox fan myself, I am happy to root for players I admire no matter what team they play for. And I was always happy to root for Papi. I do wonder whether there is more to the story than has been reported already. According to the Mitchell Report, those players on the 2003 list were notified that they were on the list in August or September of 2004. It would be pretty silly of Papi to make the comment quoted above if he had known for 5 years that he was on that list. It’s not inconceivable, of course; self-denial is a powerful force. But that would make the whole thing even sadder.
7/30/2009 7:49 pm
Let’s all lead a slow clap for RB.
But seriously, I still think you were wrong… not about Ortiz but about going public on sheer speculation. If blogging is serious journalism, then serious bloggers should know when to zip it.
7/30/2009 7:57 pm
Well, yes, Not So Fast, that’s what one says.
Of course, if one didn’t do steroids, one says, “I didn’t do steroids.”
But I must say, that statement—of which Ortiz clearly didn’t write a word—is a masterpiece of disingenuity.
“Based on the way I live my life, I am surprised to learn I have tested positive.”
Which is supposed to suggest to make you think that Ortiz is a clean liver. (No pun intended.)
When it could equally mean, “I go through my life in a daze, and deliberately don’t ask questions about substances I consume, so you betcha, I’m surprised!”
Sean, I understand the feeling but don’t share it, because it’s been so obvious for so long that Ortiz used/uses steroids. The woeful stats at Minnesota…the transformation at Boston…the physical changes…the friendship with doper Manny Ramirez…the number this year
Also, I’m not really upset because, you know, Red Sox fans kinda deserve it. Not all of them, okay…but there I was, earlier this season, hearing some pretty vulgar Fenway chants directed at A-Rod on the steroid theme, and at the time Ortiz was hitting about a-buck-twenty-five, and I just kept thinking, Do these people know the term cognitive dissonance?
Also, with his comments about loosey-goosey rules in the DR and not shopping at GNC down there any more, Ortiz has clearly been preparing for this moment for years. I will bet you any amount of money you like that, when he speaks to the crowd, this is the line Ortiz will take: I didn’t know what I was putting in my body…those crazy Dominicans!
There are two baseball players in baseball in whom I’d be truly disappointed if it came out that they were steroid-users: Albert Pujols and Derek Jeter.
7/30/2009 7:58 pm
Sorry, the above should read “…the numbers this year….”
7/30/2009 8:18 pm
Richard: I don’t have a view about Pujols, but I too would be over-whelmingly disappointed if Jeter were named. That said, the slow drip of information is making it seem more and more likely that this was a very common problem in MLB. I can feel the protective shield of cynicism forming slowly about me, and I don’t like the feeling.
7/30/2009 8:23 pm
If Derek Jeter were found to have used steroids, I would be absolutely devastated.
Thank God, I don’t think that day will ever come.
7/30/2009 11:14 pm
I, on the other hand, would be at least as pleased about Jeter’s being on such a list as Richard is about Papi’s being on it. Probably a little more in fact.
I watched a bit of some old games around the Jim Rice/Ricky Henderson inductions last week, and it was incredible just how much smaller and normal everyone looked back in the ’80’s. Sure there’s been more gym working out and all, but it really gave one pause.
7/31/2009 6:50 am
RT: I’m fascinated by the question how partisanship affects our experience of others. It’s not that I have no partisan bones in my body. I’ve been a Yankees fan since at least the era of Graig Nettles and Bucky Dent, and I root for them even here in Boston (though a bit more quietly than I used to).
But as much as I like the Yankees, what I really love to see is people I can admire doing things so great they give me goose bumps. That’s the real reason I watch sports - to see examples of human greatness that make me astonished and amazed at what we as a people can aspire to, and that help me to set my own sites a little higher. So what I really love to see is great players on any team. And if they seem to be people I can admire too - at least without digging too deep - then I think the more of that in the world the better.
It’s not that I never experience schadenfreude, either. It’s just that I don’t experience it when people I admire - as opposed to people I scorn - are taken down a notch. That always seems to me sad, to make the world a less rewarding place.
I’d have thought this is a common way to think about it, but maybe I’m wrong. So I really am interested in the other side. Is it that you experience things the way I do, basically, but just don’t see Jeter as admirable? Or is it that you would be happy to see someone you experience as admirable be taken down a notch? I can imagine either possibility, but they seem importantly different.
I’d be interested to hear form Richard on this too. I think he just doesn’t see Papi as admirable the way I do, but maybe I’ve read it wrong.
7/31/2009 8:07 am
I feel like everybody just needs to calm down a little bit on the whole steroids thing. Everybody seems to feel like the “steroids era” was somehow a unique time in baseball when players would do anything to get ahead, unlike those pure days of yore, when players were powered only by beer and tobacco. You know what? That’s a load of crap. Amphetamines were used regularly in baseball as far back as the 1940s. Steroids were used by baseball players as far back as the 1960s (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/2005-05-03-steroids-house_x.htm).
So, don’t try to tell me that this era is somehow tainted or that today’s players are different from the players of 20, 30, and 40 years ago. There are only two differences between then and now: 1. We know a lot more about what players do than we used to, because there are a lot more media covering them. 2. The drugs themselves are much more sophisticated than they used to be.
It’s all well and good to talk about how much “smaller” the players used to be, but players have always been willing to do anything-no matter if it’s illegal or unethical-to get ahead.
7/31/2009 8:20 am
That’s right, Sean, I just don’t care for Jeter. Something about the eyes, and as a child of the late sixties I find the Steinbrenner haircut look somewhat offputting. I used to think better of Damon when he looked different in that way. So it’s something of an aesthetic matter, but I would of course like Jeter better if he hit around 227 or so.
I’ve been a Red Sox fan since 1975, when I discovered them and baseball in Michigan, before I’d ever stepped foot in MA, so it’s pretty tribal and deliberately unexamined for me. Which is why I don’t like F-14s flying over stadiums-I prefer metaphor to metonymy.
Which is not to say I don’t recognize and deplore the Red Sox Nation (i.e. tribe) ‘Yankees Suck’ thing, bred of being a neighbor of a larger, more interesting metropolis, which has to be converted to inferior status, particularly when their baseball team kept beating ours up. I had lots of practice at dealing with that growing up in NZ.
Now as for Papi, I do find him admirable in terms of what he has done off the field (no, not that!), and am not aware of whether Jeter does similarly. If so, I would take some of this back.
7/31/2009 10:20 am
RT: I’ve always had the impression that Jeter is admirable off the field as well, though I confess I know only as many details about him in that respect as I do about Papi (which is to say not very many). Interesting, though, that it comes down basically to a kind of empirical issue: does the guy immediately strike you as admirable. In a way that’s reassuring.
As far as sanctimony, I don’t think anyone here has argued that this era is special in the respect suggested.
7/31/2009 11:16 am
I checked in yesterday about 10 minutes about receiving the bulletin text msg from ESPN and was disappointed to see that you, RB, hadn’t already started crowing “I was right, I was right, Yankees Rule, Red Sox fans are hypocritcal jerks (a/k/a “suck”).
I’m glad to see when I checked in this morning that all has been returned to normal in the world.
All things considered, I’d still take a juicing Ortiz over a juicing jerky A-Rod. Love that new galpal of his by the way. Oiy.
7/31/2009 2:10 pm
Then I would take it back, Sean. I get the sense RB’s hostility to Youk is similarly empirical, since he does good things through his “hits for kids” charity, but as Wikipedia has it:
‘He has excelled despite a physique that led many observers to understimate his athletic ability: he was called “roly-poly” by his high school coach, “pudgy” by his college coach, a “fat kid” by general manager Billy Beane, and a “thicker-bodied guy” by the Red Sox scout who recruited him.’
Though now I think of it, Youk was maybe rude to Richard in an interview?
7/31/2009 7:06 pm
As one of those commenters who has previously questioned RB’s Papi posts, I don’t feel that I have anything to apologize for. The point of my critiques, and most of the others I read here, was that you were using bad evidence to support your point. I certainly never denied that it was possible that he used — who could deny that about any MLB player now? — only that you were failing to make a fair argument for that conclusion.
This has become quite a nice discussion, though.