Ortiz, Ramirez tested positive for PED’s in 2003
What a sad day. David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez's accomplishments during at least the 2003 season are now tainted due to their usage of performance-enhancing drugs.
The Boston Red Sox, after losing three straight games against the New York Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series, won the next four games against their hated rival. Slugger David Ortiz was responsible for two of those wins, hitting a game-winning two-run home-run in Game 4 and a game-winning single in Game 5. He was unbelievable and one of my favorite players. He led the Red Sox to their first World Series title in 86 years.
But now, I don’t know what to think of him, nor his sidekick, Manny Ramirez. Why? Because it has become public knowledge that two of the best power-hitters of their era tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs during the 2003 season. No team had a better middle of the order than the Red Sox. No team had two better hitters than Ortiz and Ramirez. They were deadly side-by-side and feared by every opponent. Now, they are just two steroid users who couldn’t get by on natural talent.
According to an article written by Michael Schmidt of the New York Times, “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.”
Once my father informed me of the news over the phone, I was shocked, but not entirely surprised. Ortiz and Ramirez both felt pressure to succeed, just like fellow alleged steroid users Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, who were responsible for the famed and tainted home-run race of 1997, did. They felt as though they needed a leg-up. Alex Rodriguez, whose name was leaked from this same list last year, did too. Why did Ortiz and Ramirez, like Rodriguez, Sosa and McGwire before them, feel this way?
Ortiz joined the Red Sox, coincidentally, in 2003 after being released by the Minnesota Twins. He had multiple holes in his swing and was strike-out prone in Minnesota, but once he came to the Red Sox, coincidentally, his fortunes changed. Ortiz hit 20 home-runs in 125 games in 2002. In 2003, however, he hit 31 home-runs and drove in 101 runs–compared to his 75 in 2002–while playing in just three more games. The following season, during which he could have still been on drugs, his home-run total increased by ten; in 2005, he hit 47 home-runs, and in 2006, he hit 54 home-runs.
Since the 2006 season, his numbers have dropped drastically. He hit 19 less home-runs in 2007 while playing in two less games, and his total decreased to 23 home-runs in 2008. As much as it pains me to say this, his home-run pattern is the classic pattern of someone juiced on steroids.
The best thing for him to do now is come clean. He can’t deny it, as Alex Rodriguez, whose name was leaked from this same list last year, did, then admit his offense. He has to apologize, and if it was a mistake, say so. According to Schmidt, “in 2007, Ortiz said he used to buy a protein shake when he was younger in the Dominican Republic and did not know if it contained a performance-enhancing drug.” Evidently, it did.
Ramirez’s usage during this alleged time period doesn’t shock me as much as Ortiz’s, but is still difficult to comprehend. Earlier this year, Ramirez tested positive for a sexual-enhancer, HcG. As Yahoo! Sports Tim Brown reported at the time, “They [LN and HcG) also can be used to trigger testosterone production. Testosterone is depleted by steroid use, and low testosterone can cause erectile dysfunction. HCG is used to re-stimulate the testicles, primarily in men with a history of steroid use.” So, now the public knows why he was taking this sexual enhancer. It wasn’t necessarily to please his wife after all.
Both players broke the number-one rule in baseball and their statistics during the alleged time period should be tainted, but how did their supposedly anonymous tests get leaked?
Schmidt has the answer: “Baseball first tested for steroids in 2003, and the results from that season were supposed to remain anonymous. But for reasons that have never been made clear, the results were never destroyed and the first batch of positives has come to be known among fans and people in baseball as “the list.” The information was later seized by federal agents investigating the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes, and the test results remain the subject of litigation between the baseball players union and the government.”
Major League Baseball screwed up, but that doesn’t take away from what Ortiz and Ramirez did. Not only did they do steroids, just like Rodriguez, Sosa, and McGwire before them, but they broke the hearts of every Red Sox fan who admired them. Deeply disappointing everyone, including myself who thought they were clean and just plain talented.
What have I been telling you all year!
This has always been about the MLB vs. The MLBPA.
That is why Selig had a guy with conections on Capitol Hill conduct an investigation without due process, because he wanted a conclusion that the only way to get drugs out of baseball was to force the union to accept a salary cap so the Yankees cannot pay players to cheat.
This is just the begining, over the next two years, this storyline will be further developed.
This is the begining of the destruction of the credibility of George Mitchell.
George Mitchell sat in his office in Fenway Park, illegally comendeering Federal Agents to run around the country doing his bidding as if they were his private secret police, and meanwhile a short walk down the hall from where he littarly sat, this guy Persinal is passisng out the stuff to Manny, Papi, and the boys like it is candy.
His credibility is destroyed by this.
That is not the perception today, but that is where this is going, and that is the whole purpose of the disclosure.
For Gods sake, Mitchell, on the moring of ALCS game 7, leaked to Peter Gammons the name of Paul Byrd as being in the Mitchell Report, 4 months before it was published, so the guy had to spend the entire day answering questions, and he did it to give the Red Sox an unfair competitive advantage.
In the end Mitchell goes down in history as the baseball version of J.Edgar Hoover.
Roger Clemens is the big winner in this today.
This disclosure proves Mitchell is a liar.
Mitchell said his team was clean, and he lied when he said it, and he knew he was lying when he said it.
What you believe, whether or not you think he is guilty, or what present public opinion, largely shaped by ESPN is, is irrelevant.
50 years from now, in the pages of history, it will say that Roger Clemens was innocent, and that he was the biggest figure in the biggest rivalry since the Babe, and this hack J. Edgar Hoover politician type from the Red Sox, not only tried to destroy him professionally, and did so without any proof whatsoever, but he also used a media empire to destroy the guys reputation, and he wasn’t even satisfied with that, because he also used the full weight and force of the entire United States Federal Government to try to put Clemens in prison.
No doubt about it, allot of people in the here and now are still going to try to equivicate it and say, yeah Mitchell wasn’t perfect, and yeah the investigation could have been better, but Clemens is this and Clemens is that, but the pages of history isn’t going to be written by interested parties, and it isn’t going to be writtne by anyone here and now.
Years from now, in the pages of history, Clemens will be depicted as an innocent victim, and Mitchell will be depicted as a corrupt, evil and vindictive man, and he is not going to be remembered for anyting in his political carrer, just like nobody now remembers who the Senate Majority Leader was in 1929, he will be remembered for his involvement in baseball, just like Judge Landis is only remembered for his involvement in baseball.
I think I was more disappointed that Ortiz did them than Manny. Ortiz came out against steroids before the season for no aparant reason than to condem A-Rod’s use of them. I think he should take a year off, just like he said that all the cheaters should get a 1 year ban.
I think Manny would have hit 500 HR’s with or without PED’s and although his numbers did increase when he went to Boston, it was the prime of his career. I also forgive Manny a little more because he is the only “star” that has served a suspension. No other big name implicated in PED’s has served a suspension except him. He lost a third of a season, so since he did his time that should count towards something at the end of his career… We debated on the fairness of how everything has been handled in an e-mail chain eariler today that’s posted on our site…
http://doin-work.com/2009/07/30/doin-work-e-mail-debate-who-else-is-on-the-list-of-100-that-used-peds/
Also, if you read the NY Times article, it is somewhat implicit, and if you read the remarks that Ortiz now has made after the game where he says the Union has notified him that he failed the test, as if he didn’t know, Ortiz is even further implicitly trying to say he believed the MLBPA leaked it.
If you read the remarks from Ortiz, and the NY Times article, and what ESPN has published, where in one place they say it was an attorney on the case, who they are saying the leaker is, is the new guy who is going to become the head of the MLBPA, whose name escapes me.
If this goes the way it has gone over the past few hours this could bloww up even more.
Ortiz is refusing to acknowedge that he used drugs.
If you deconstruct precisely what he is saying, although it may seem that he is owning up to it, he really isn’t, and all he is saying is that the MLBPA is saying that he failed a test. He isn’t saying he used anything, and he isn’t even admitting he failed the test.
Whats more, is that all the defenders of the Ortiz/Red Sox/Mitchell/Selig axis are at this early juncture trying to connect this to the MLBPA lawyer, because if they do, then he has committed a felony.
It is very early, but they may very well decide to go peatal to the metal with this, because they may see this as the only way to preserve the reputation of Mitchell.
It is a losing hand to play, because even if they connect the leak, which they can’t because the reporter can’t reveal the source even if they want to, which was the reason why Judith Miller of the NY Times went to jail to protect the Valarie Plame leak, even though she hated Bush, even IF they connect the leak, it STILL doesn’t invalidate the test result.
Going down this road just keeps the matter under scutiny.
Additionally, even though there will be many looking to help David Ortiz, because that is what Selig wants, and Selig runs MLB, which as a multi billion dollar industry which holds allot of media sway, David Ortiz isn’t going to tamp this down by dodging it, and not ever acknowedging whether or not he took a drug or failed a test, and instead just saying in carefully choosen words that the union says he failed a test.
That isn’t going to work.
He is going to be followed everywhere he goes, until he either says, yes I failed a test, or no I did not fail a test, and until he either says yes I used a drug, or no I did not use a drug.
If he continues to stonewall this until he gets to New York next week it is going to become a collossial media circus.
Yes, if he knows anything, he has to come out and say it. He can’t work around the subject. If he does, it will still be a distraction, which this team doesn’t need.
He can’t dodge the subject, because if he does, people with think he’s denying that he took steroids. So, if later it’s confirmed that he did steroids, and what he took becomes common knowledge, he will be portrayed as both a liar and a cheater, like A-Rod.
I know this, he has some explaining to do. At least he got a break from it all and led Boston to victory.