David Ortiz is off to an great start. So of course he must be cheating. At least that’s Dan Shaugnessy’s thought process:
I went to Ortiz Tuesday afternoon in the Sox clubhouse and put some hard questions to him. I told him he looks dirty.
Did he hear the fans in Toronto chanting, “Steroids!’’?
“No, not really,” said Ortiz. “Why?’’
Because what you are doing looks too good to be true.
“They test me all the time,” he said. “They make you pee and they test your blood, too. This year I would say I’ve probably been tested five times, peeing. Blood, just once. That was in spring training. They don’t warn you. They just show up.’’
What it is like to be suspected?
“I don’t think I have been,” he said. “Nobody comes to me and tells me, ‘They suspect you are using steroids.’ ’’
Shaugnessy’s evidence: Ortiz is Dominican. he was injured last year. He’s hitting well now. Ten years ago he tested positive for PEDs. Oh, and this gem when Ortiz asked if he’s not supposed to hit better when he is healthy than when he was injured:
No, but the rest of us don’t get better when we get older. I could touch the rim when I played basketball in high school. I’m not out there throwing down dunks today.
Well, what else do you need to hear? I mean, c’mon, no one in the history of baseball has ever hit .381 through 16 games. He’s basically breaking the laws of physics and bending the space-time continuum.
Of course Ortiz is tested just like every other player in Major League Baseball. Since the positive test in 2003 he has not tested positive. If Shaugnessy thinks that, despite this, Ortiz is dirty, he should have something better than “great hitter is off to a hot start.” Or he should explain why he has no faith in the drug testing system. But he has neither. He just took the laziest and most incendiary tack he could think of and ran with it.
Not that we should be surprised. This makes at least the tenth time — maybe the 100th time, I’ve lost count — since a blogger named Jerod Morris was pilloried by the print media for even suggesting that Raul Ibanez’s hot start in 2009 was, potentially, a result of PED use that a member of the print media has done the same damn thing. No one cares when it’s a credentialed member of the media, though. They’re allowed to hurl as many irresponsible allegations as they’d like because, hell, I dunno. Because they could touch the rim when they played basketball or something.
