bryan stratton dot com

If David Ortiz intentionally took a banned substance in order to boost his performance, I’m incredibly disappointed. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that that’s the case, given some of the revelations that have come out of the sport in the last few years. At the very least, he didn’t ask the questions he should have asked, but let’s face it: he probably knew exactly what he was doing and did it anyway.

But really, why shouldn’t he have? Can you really claim that any substances were “banned” substances when MLB had no drug testing policy for years? Those ’03 tests were meant to determine how widespread PED use was, and there were 104 names on that list (and probably dozens, if not hundreds, more players who slipped by with false negatives). If a player wasn’t using, he had to have known teammates who were, and the closest we have to a heroic whistleblower is professional knockout victim Jose Canseco.

Is it cheating if everyone is cheating? Is it against the rules if the rules aren’t ever enforced? I know that we’re supposed to “think about the children” and discourage PED use so that kids don’t see it as a viable shortcut (and that’s really the only argument that works for me), but let’s face it: MLB not only didn’t discourage its use, it tacitly encouraged it. MLB stonewalled a testing program for years and pushed Bonds’/McGwire’s/Sosa’s home run records chases as Big Sports Events, because after the ’94 players’ strike, MLB desperately needed people to care about the sport again. MLB cheated to get ratings, just like Papi and Manny cheated to get homers, just like Clemens cheated to get a few more years in.

It has always pissed me off when one PED-user is held up as a symbol of all that is wrong in baseball, like the sport’s problems began and ended with Jose Canseco or Alex Rodriguez.

They’re not the problem. They’re the symptoms of the problem. And tearing them down for doing the same things that their luckier peers got away with at a time when there were no consequences for that behavior is like blaming your thinning hair for your cancer.

Finally, I just want to add that I don’t feel like a hypocrite for saying any of this. When I was at a Mariners game in ’07, and they announced that Barry Bonds had just broken the home run record, I stood up and applauded when it seemed like everyone else in the stadium was booing. My reasoning was (and is), if MLB doesn’t care that the guy was using, then why should I? And while I had great fun with A-Rod when his name was leaked from the same list that Papi and Manny are on, I didn’t feel cheated out of anything. It was just another way to razz Yanks’ fans, along with the mirror-makeout photo spread and every other douchey thing he’s ever said and done.

I read Dan Shaughnessy’s piece in the Globe (“Suffering From ‘Roid Rage”), where he laments that Sox fans can now only say about the Yankees is that, in ’04 and ’07, “our cheaters were better than their cheaters.”

But isn’t that enough? You’re basically saying that, on a level playing field, where players were allowed to shoot whatever they wanted into their veins with no threat of suspension, our team was better than your team. Isn’t that the whole point? Do you need to believe that we were the heroic, clean-as-a-whistle David bringing down a testosterone-infused Goliath for those rings to matter to you? And if so, might I suggest that you need to grow up?

The Sox were the greatest team in baseball on ’04 and ’07. The fact that baseball has been a cesspool of corruption doesn’t change that fact. Manny getting busted in ’09 for using? Lame and shame-worthy. Manny and Papi using in ’03? Don’t really care, honestly.

(reprinted from a rambling string of comments on my friend Jim’s blog regarding the same subject)