On The Triangle blog of Grantland today, Jonah Keri examines the resurgence OR depending on your viewpoint, the continued excellence of David Ortiz. About 25% of the blog post discusses the accusations (most recently by the Boston Globe) and circumstantial evidence linking Ortiz to PEDs. Though Keri (one of my favorite baseball writers) correctly takes the Globe story to task for focusing on the gun that does not have any smoke emanating whatsoever (the 14-game small sample size vs. the previous two seasons that seemed... different), we must be reminded... that we asked for this.
In the wake of the PED scandal in Major League Baseball, one of the most frequently cried arguments and criticisms was the sport media's complicity during this time. We derided the writers and analysts who fawned over Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and Nook Logan - ok, maybe not him so much - without question. We, the baseball-loving public that turned our own eyes, made The Fourth Estate the co-conspirator in the alleged smearing of our National Pastime. We demanded this not happen again and many people expressed betrayal and naivete mostly due to feeling duped after spending $120 on a shiny new Eric Gagne jersey.
Fast-forward a few years and Ortiz is putting up numbers that belong in the heart of the "steroids era". At his age and build, he should not be experiencing a statistical renaissance eerily similar to his original eye-opening rise to prominence in his age 26-29 seasons. Ortiz claims it is unfair for us to question the reasons for this and his defenders want to once again do their best impression of an ostrich, but they must be reminded that - right or wrong - this is what they wanted. For Ortiz, he only has his peers, and possibly himself, to thank.
