Sports
Related: About this forumbluedigger
(17,087 posts)Big Papi gave all his fans could ask for.
Auggie
(31,194 posts)mythology
(9,527 posts)It's funny how being a jerk like Barry Bonds or Alex Rodriguez means fans are willing to condemn them, but being a congenial guy like David Ortiz means fans are willing to not mention he's been busted for PEDs and his career numbers are dramatically out of whack for his career totals in home runs on measures like home runs hit through age 26 or at bats per home run late in his career.
Being a nice guy makes being a cheater easier. But that doesn't mean he's any less of a cheater and shouldn't be treated with the same scorn as any other cheater.
Auggie
(31,194 posts)Ortiz was good for ratings
bluedigger
(17,087 posts)You show up for pretty much every Ortiz thread to say the same thing, over and over. In fact, I think it's the only time you have anything to say here in Sports. You're own little crusade. I can only assume you had a cherished player fall afoul of PEDs and wish to take everyone else down, too.
Speaking at Fenway Park before the final regular-season game of Ortiz's career, Manfred said the 2003 anonymous survey testing agreed upon by MLB and the players' union returned at least 10 scientifically questionable results in addition to the 5 percent of positive tests required to trigger mandatory testing the following year. According to Manfred, those particular tests were inconclusive because "it was hard to distinguish between certain substances that were legal, available over the counter, and not banned under our program."
A confidentiality agreement and the subsequent destruction of those results prevented Manfred from saying with any certainty whether Ortiz was among the potentially false positives. But he couldn't have been clearer that he doesn't believe the mention of Ortiz's name in the New York Times story should cloud his legacy.
"The list was supposed to be confidential. I take very seriously the commitment on confidentiality," Manfred said. "It is really unfortunate that anybody's name was ever released publicly, Point 1. Point 2: I don't think people understand very well what that list was.
"There were legitimate scientific questions about whether or not those were truly positives. If, in fact, there were test results like that today on a player and we tried to discipline them, there'd be a grievance over it. It would be vetted, tried, resolved. We didn't do that. Those issues and ambiguities were never resolved because we knew they didn't matter.
"We knew we had enough positives that everyone agreed on that we knew were going to trigger the testing the following year. Even if Rob Manfred's name was on that list, he might have been one of those 10 of 15 where there was probably or at least a very legitimate explanation that did not involve the use of a banned substance."
http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/17706532/david-ortiz-says-did-wrong-03-failed-drug-test