Red Sox Nation on Mass Suicide Watch

"I think you clean up the game by the testing. I test you, you test positive, you're going to be out. Period. If I test positive using any kind of banned substance I'm going to disrespect the game, my family, my fans and everybody. And I don't want to face the situation so I won't use it. I'm sure everybody is on the same page."—Boston Red Sox “slugger” David Ortiz, quoted by Nick Cafardo, “Deep Thoughts From Ortiz,” “Extra Bases: Red Sox Updates and Insights,” The Boston Globe, Feb. 16, 2009

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!

Sorry. It’s out of my system now.

Don’t get me wrong: I have no wish to poke fun at Big Papi himself. One of my cousins, a trustworthy, discerning fellow if I ever saw one, told me a few weeks ago at a party that he had had the pleasure earlier in this decade of meeting Ortiz in the Caribbean, where the DH-first baseman was playing winter ball.

My cousin was mightily impressed with the affability and lack of ego of Ortiz, who, at that time, expressed the hope that he might land with one of two contenders: the Yankees or the Red Sox. Obviously, we know how that turned out.

Ortiz could have gotten a dig in at A-Rod (who would have deserved it a thousand times over) earlier this year for testing positive, as more than one of his teammates have done in the past. Instead, he was the soul of graciousness.

No, my beef is not with the Bosox DH, but with the Red Sox Nation that lionized him beyond all reason. For the last year or so, they’ve been crowing an awful lot that they’ve won the World Series twice in the last six years, reversing Babe Ruth’s curse, and without benefit of the juicing that went on in the Bronx Zoo.

Now, it looks as if all that moral preening was a trifle premature. The Yankees and Mets (another New York sports team that administered the Curse of the Bambino when the Yankees were out of the running one year) were so heavily represented in the Mitchell Report on performing-enhancing drugs (PEDs) only because baseball's designated investigator (and Bosox investor) was able to land one hanger-on from these two ballclubs to point the finger at their teams. Only a bunch of idiots would have thought that their own club wouldn’t have their share of juicers.

But, as they’ve pointed out in the most tiresome manner over the last several years, the self-styled “Idiots” have all been up at Fenway, rockin’ and rollin’ their way since 2004.

This morning, wondering how Red Sox Nation was taking the news that Big Daddy had tested positive for PEDs, I got a copy of the nerve center for the crazed fans, the Boston Globe. There, tucked into the lower left-hand corner of the editorial pages, was the most expected, if predictable, of hand-wringing headlines: “Say It Ain’t So, Papi.”

Any publication whose parent company (The New York Times) possesses a 17% ownership claim in an organization they cover would, under normal circumstances, be afraid of conflict-of-issues questions—unless, of course, you’re the insufferably smug Globe, which has that close financial relationship with the Red Sox. Then, you cater to a fan base that at the moment looks bent on mass suicide over their favorite.

Several weeks ago, I had a friendly argument with a co-worker about my contention that Big Papi was taking steroids, HGH, or something else not yet detected. “Spoken like a Yankee fans,” he said dismissively.

Now, I could say that I take no pleasure in events proving me right. But if I did, I’d be like Big Papi, in the statement above: i.e., lying through my teeth.

Sorry. I couldn’t resist. It won’t happen again…

Where was I?

Oh, yeah…

I’d like to say that I had some special deductive powers that led to my conclusions about Ortiz. But I’m not Sherlock Holmes in the slightest. I didn’t have special knowledge that anyone who follows baseball with even mild interest didn’t have already. All the facts were in plain sight, like Edgar Allan Poe’s “Purloined Letter.”

For me, three sets of circumstances clinched the case:

* Before coming to the Red Sox, Ortiz posted no special numbers in six seasons with the Minnesota Twins. As noted by Russell Wight on the Web site “Bleacher Report,” he averaged .266 and one home run in 29 plate appearances. The Twins, one of the better organizations at nurturing young talent, were willing to let him go—perhaps thinking he might find it hard to overcome his tendency to strike out often. By the end of 2003, though, Ortiz had hit 31 homers, on his way to a five-year stretch when he and fellow juicer Manny Ramirez formed the most devastating 1-2 punch since Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris in their 1960-64 heyday.

* How to explain, then, the home run surge? The consequence of batting in front of Ramirez? Of playing in a hitter-friendly park? Of a promising hitter coming into his own? Of superior coaching by the Red Sox staff succeeding where others had failed? Puh-leez. Overcoming a penchant for strikeouts, and for raising one’s home run totals and batting average, can’t be done so dramatically, so instantly, without better health or peace of mind. Unless you have pharmacological assistance, of course.

* By the end of the 2007 season, Ortiz was not only being hailed as the greatest clutch hitter in Red Sox history but as the greatest clutch hitter of his generation. A few even wondered if he might be the greatest clutch hitter of all time. It didn’t take me longer to figure out what was wrong with this picture.

Now, of course, it’s all changed. The criticism that Curt Schilling justifiably directed at Jose Canseco now applies equally well to Ortiz: he accomplished nothing significant in his career without the benefit of PEDs.

How different with other known users. Say what you will about Barry Bonds, but he was on the way to career totals of 500 homers and 500 stolen bases—numbers that, by themselves, would have guaranteed him a plaque in Cooperstown—before he made his disastrous decision to check out Balco's offerings. Even Alex Rodriguez (who, as my longtime readers know, I have little if any affection for) at least has been a five-tool player.

But Ortiz? Take away the home run and batting average marks that, we now know, were chemically enhanced, and what do you have? A guy who can’t throw, who is such a menace in the field that the DH could have been invented for him, and who can only steal a base when the entire infield decides it’s time for a mass siesta.

At the same time that Ortiz’s reputation is being reevaluated, we might want to do the same thing with the two wonder boys of baseball management, Billy Beane and Theo Epstein.

Earlier in this decade, with one playoff appearance after another, Beane’s "Moneyball" philosophy was the talk of baseball. Nowadays, with his team far out of the running, it’s fair to wonder if Joe Morgan wasn't right in wondering how much of its earlier success owed to all the talk about on-base percentage versus having some young guns on the mound and a guy who was hailed as the second coming of Lou Gehrig—a juicer by the name of Jason Giambi.

And Epstein? Even before the revelation about Ramirez and Ortiz, the Mitchell Report noted that the Sox GM used to inquire about players’ steroid use before going ahead with deals. Even after being told that reliever Eric Gagne had been a user, Epstein pulled the trigger on bringing him to the team. Not exactly rewarding integrity, was he?

Likewise, the Mitchell Report fingered Jeremy Giambi—who, incidentally, preceded Ortiz on the Bosox depth chart at DH at the start of ’03—as a PED user.

And this might not be all. Earlier today, pitcher Bronson Arroyo said he wouldn’t be surprised if he were one of the 100 or so unnamed players still left on the PED list from ’03, as he used androstenedione and amphetamines before they were banned by baseball.

Who else might be else on the list? Once I never gave a second’s thought to the possibility that Pedro Martinez might be, but since the revelations about A-Rod in the winter, it’s been known that the former great Red Sox pitcher was one of a number of players (including known users A-Rod, Miguel Tejada, Juan Gonzalez, and Ruben Sierra) linked to Angel Presinal, who major league baseball felt was so unsavory that it banned him from the private areas of every ballpark after he was caught with a "gym bag full of steroids" meant for Gonzalez in 2001.

The more Ortiz goes on, the more likely he is to damage the reputation he developed with fans ever since his arrival in Beantown. His latest statement is a beaut: “I am trying to find out what's going on. When I get my stuff together, I'll let you guys know.”

What’s there to find out? He used ‘roids or he didn’t, and can say so accordingly.

Ortiz is signed through the end of the 2010 season, but I wonder if Epstein might not buy out the contract and release him a year earlier. The “slugger” will be facing something he’s seldom known in his time with the Bosox: a skeptical press. The questions are going to mount about how much his recent slump is due to the normal injuries a 30-plus player has versus the sudden, irrevocable decline that so many PED users experience.

Like the Baltimore Orioles’ front-office power Frank Cashen in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Epstein has been remarkably unsentimental over the last few years, dealing fan favorites like Bill Mueller, Kevin Millar, Derek Lowe and Dave Roberts when he felt their time was up. I’d be surprised if he didn’t act in a similar fashion with Ortiz.

For all too many in Red Sox Nation, this week represented the end of the innocence. The shame of it is that they should have realized it sooner.