FOX baseball man Ken Ro senthal last week muscled up and swung hard at everyone everywhere who has publicly suggested that David “Big Papi” Ortiz’s sudden and sustained power outage can or might be blamed on an absence of performance enhancing drugs.
And FOX, in a news release, was eager to get Rosenthal’s words out:
“Ten years ago, no self-respecting journalist would have speculated that a player was using PEDs without some form of proof. Today, respected journalists, blogs, chat rooms and other Internet vehicles have blithely suggested that Ortiz is in decline because he no longer takes PEDs.
“It’s irresponsible. It’s unfair. It needs to stop.
“Several times in recent weeks radio talk-show hosts have asked me what I thought of the possibility that Ortiz was using PEDs. I have no idea; probably no journalist does. I could not even make an educated guess, and it would be unprofessional of me to do so.
“Here’s one thing I do know: Before steroids players actually declined as they got older. Ortiz is 33. Maybe he is losing his skills. Maybe he just stinks. If I were an innocent player I would fight back. But I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Strong stuff. Good stuff, too. Rosenthal is correct. Such suggestions and suspicions are irresponsible, terribly unfair.
They’re also natural, inevitable, reasonable and, in 2009, based less in scandal-mongering than in conditioned, do-the-math common sense.
Sure, 33 is when athletic skills naturally begin to decline. When Barry Bonds was 33 he hit 37 home runs. When he was 36 he hit 73. Sammy Sosa hit 36 homers when he was 28, 64 when he was 32. Mark McGwire hit 70 when he was 34, 65 at 35. Age, in the PED era, can mean anywhere from nothing to a lot. Same goes for PED testing.
Todd Hundley had never hit more than 16 homers. In 1996, he hit 41. Just like that. From 2003 through last season, Ortiz hit 231 home runs. And now? He has one. Just like that.
Not that journalism is thriving, but if Ortiz is the victim of irresponsible and unfair innuendo, and he wishes to fight back, unlike Rosenthal I’d know exactly where to start. I’d start with Bud Selig and Donald Fehr.
MLB’s most authoritative authority figures years ago and for years that followed didn’t want to know or even suspect a thing. Now, having unsuccessfully pretended to be the last to know, they’ve asked that we think of them as the first to act, as MLB’s emergency first-responders.
Our conditioned suspicions about Ortiz and everyone else were nurtured by the money-first, purposeful neglect of Fehr and Selig, not the media. PEDs became the gold in the gold rush. Responsible journalists 10, 20 years ago were afraid to report their suspicions. Now they’d be foolish not to. The media didn’t do that to MLB, MLB did that to MLB.
It’s true; PED glares cast Ortiz’s way are irresponsible and unfair. And as natural and predictable as finding bugs under rocks. But guilty until proven innocent is a reality that Fehr and Selig’s leadership, not bloggers nor radio talk-show hosts, years ago guaranteed for sooner or later. And now that time is here.
So if Ortiz and all the rest imprisoned by irresponsible and unfair suspicion wish to fight for their good names, they should start by submitting their grievances to their union head and to the commissioner. And immediately, because when confronted by clear and present dangers to the integrity of the game and its players, those two fellas act fast.
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Red Wings’ coach Mike Babcock, addressing a Stanley Cup Finals rematch with the Penguins, has a good sense of modern marketing, the kind that promotes stars instead of teams. Noting the NHL’s emphasis on the Pens’ Sidney Crosby, Babcock said: “Actually, when I watch the commercials from last year’s games, I think they won.”
Yankee super fast guy Brett Gardner yesterday bounced into a double play. For all the stats we get it would’ve been nice had YES told us how many times Gardner has done that. . . . Ralph Kiner, working a couple of innings on SNY’s Marlins-Mets, on Saturday, is still sharp, relevant and, above all, entertaining.
Jets and 1050-ESPN have renewed through the 2012 season. With the NFL eager to add night games, especially played by big TV market teams, that becomes a problem; 1050’s signal fades at sundown.
There were so few seated in those $600 backstop seats on Saturday, it often seemed that the Mets might be playing to an empty house in their new ballpark on what Gary Cohen described as “a perfect late May afternoon.”
Bottom of the ninth, game tied, man on second. Batter singles up the middle. The runner from second, pumping with all he’s got, is being waved home. The center fielder charges, comes up throwing. Throw to the plate, cloud of dust. He is . . . safe! And that’s now called “a walk-off.” Got it.
