Raul Ibanez, responding to a blogger’s speculation that his career-best numbers may be due to performance-enhancing drugs:
I’ll come after people who defame or slander me. It’s pathetic and
disgusting. There should be some accountability for people who put that
out there. Unfortunately, I understand the environment we’re in and the
events that have led us to this era of speculation. At the same time,
you can’t just walk down the street and accuse somebody of being a
thief because they didn’t have a nice car yesterday and they do today.
You can’t say that guy is a thief.
You can have my urine, my hair, my blood, my stool … anything you
can test. I’ll give you back every dime I’ve ever made [if the test is
positive]. I’ll put that up against the jobs of anyone who writes this
stuff. Make them accountable. There should be more credibility than
some 42-year-old blogger typing in his mother’s basement. It demeans
everything you’ve done with one stroke of the pen.
I’m in complete agreement with Ibanez when it comes to the
increasing number of people willing to just toss out steroid
accusations like it’s nothing. However, why in the world is he
responding to some random article written by someone who goes by “JRod” on a blog that seemingly has a minimal readership?
“Ibanez
rips blogger” makes for a juicy headline and the mainstream media loves
nothing more than a good blog-bashing story, but why is this even on
Ibanez’s radar? Or perhaps more accurately, why did someone in
Philadelphia put it on his radar? There are thousands of blogs, just as
there are thousands of radio shows and newspaper columns and fans
talking at bars. Throw a rock and you’ll hit someone accusing a player
of steroid use.
Why does this particular unsubstantiated
accusation matter compared to all the rest? Credibility shouldn’t be
about the platform you’re on, it should be about whether or not the
things you say and do are, you know, credible.
There are plenty of mainstream media members with huge audiences who’re
miles from credible and there are plenty of little-read bloggers who’re
extremely credible, and there’s everything in between. I’m not sure why
Ibanez would pick this battle to fight or why there’s even a battle at
all.
With all of that said, I do appreciate Ibanez’s efforts to
keep the “blogger typing in his mother’s basement” meme alive, because
I was worried that it was falling too far into the parody realm to live
on at this point. Also, as long as he’s getting into the “responding to
bloggers” business, someone ought to tell Ibanez that there’s no
“stroke of the pen” involved. We use keyboards in our mothers’
basements now.
