Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz were among the 104 major league players listed as having tested positive for performance-enhancing substances in 2003, lawyers with knowledge of the results told The New York Times.
The two were key members of the Boston Red Sox World Series championship teams in 2004 and 2007.
It’s over. As a Boston sports fan I can’t begin to elucidate how shitty this is. Think about what it was like when the Red Sox won back in 2004. Boston was the city of the underdog. The Patriots were yet to be outed for their creative use of a videocamera, and the most famed and notorious championship-drought, tethered to the ghosts of dead baseball players past and years of agonizingly close encounters with greatness, had finally been brought to an end with the ALCS comeback against the Yankees and the World Series win against the Cardinals. The whole country was rooting for Boston. Call it a bandwagon, but it was better than a bandwagon. It was authentic. America always has loved underdogs, and the Red Sox were the quintessential underdog for the better part of a century. There was something ephemerally satisfying about seeing them finally come out on top, even for sports fans from different areas. But it wasn’t just the underdog status that attracted non-residents to the Sox. It was the way they won. It was their “idiots” mentality, they personified a group of people playing the game the right way, for the right reasons. Ortiz and his infectiously happy demeanor was one of the faces of this organization’s newfound bonhomie. Until now.
Don’t let anyone tell you differently. New England sports fans deserve the shit they’ll eventually get from the rest of the U.S. First we gloated about the Patriots. Much like the Red Sox, they were a free-spirited bunch with team spirit and a little extra brains and an unusually cleft-chinned quarterback on their side. We rubbed it in hard. Three championships in four years and we made sure you knew it. Then the videotaping scandal occured, and the Patriots still went 18-0 with no unfair help, and we fans said “Ha! They won because they’re great, not because they cheated!” We exuded headstrong confidence, only to see the Pats produce what is now the “EPIC FAIL” moment of the NFL this decade. They choked hard. And you, the rest of the U.S, reveled in it the way you reveled in Sadaam Hussein’s hanging. But the Sox were still clean, and they were the loveable underdogs. Until the signs started coming…
1) When the Mitchell report first came out, it was for one reason or another swept under the rug that Mitchell himself had ties to the Red Sox. He was a director for the Red Sox at one time, and has regained that title since. But a few names from the Red Sox showed up on the list, so people weren’t too upset. None of them famous, though. Mo Vaughn 10 years after his prime? Jason Giambi’s brother Jeremy? Yawn. I ignored this. Ortiz and Varitek were supposed to be on that list, but if they weren’t, they weren’t. After all, Mitchell was a senator. When it comes to the truth, senators are always an absolute entity.
2) Then came speculation regarding Ortiz’s home-run surge. When he was in Minnesota, he never reached reached 30 homers. Then he came to Boston and was a HR/RBI machine. Boston fans like myself rationalized it accordingly: Boston had better hitting coaches. Ortiz was a natural pull-hitter, and Minnesota tried to make him a contact hitter. Boston let his true form reign. It had nothing to do with his ballooned physique.
3) I still ignored the signs. We all did. But then the last one came, the precipitous fall in power numbers. We’ve seen it in the steroid-era players all the time. Normally a player’s numbers should drop off at a much more gradual pace, as their body slowly deteriorates. Instead Ortiz’s numbers dropped in almost immediate conjunction with increased scrutiny over steroid use: Here are the HR and RBI numbers over the last decade (Minnesota numbers added for emphasis)…
2000 (MIN) – 10/63
2001 (MIN) – 18/48
2002 (MIN)- 20/75
2003 (BOS) – 31/101
2004 (BOS) – 41/139
2005 (BOS) – 47/148
2006 (BOS) – 54/137
2007 (BOS) – 35/117
2008 (BOS) – 23/89
And now in 2009 it’s taken him 93 games to crack 13 HR and 55 RBI. We all knew what was coming. Then additional evidence poured in anyway, just for good measure.
4) Amidst comments from Lou Merloni, it was rumored Red Sox doctors tacitly approved steroid-use by trying to educate their players on how not to abuse them. Sox fans started shivering in their sleep.
5) Ortiz’s friend Manny Ramirez was linked to steroid use and suspended 50 games. At this point we were all practically sobbing, forlornly playing “Sweet Caroline” on our speakers alone in the dark while reminiscing of the naive and innocent past. We knew it was coming.
Finally, it did. Ortiz, our beloved and always-smiling hero, was a steroid-user. All the clutch homeruns, all the chest bumps, the shots of Jack with his fellow “idiots” before games, all of it had become hollowed out. The Yankees were supposed to be the “Evil Empire,” but the Red Sox were no better. They just hid it slightly better.
The only team I really have left right now is the Celtics. So help me God, I think they might be a team that without sneaky videotaping or HGH or steroids, might have actually bonded together and won a real championship the right way. I swear, if it turns up Kevin Garnett was on performance – enhancers I’m giving up following all sports except golf and billiards for the rest of my blonde days.
R.I.P. Boston-mania. R.I.P. Red Sox Nation. R.I.P. all of the excitement and Stephen King books and “I can die happy now” plastered on the grandfathers’ graves. R.I.P. to being “idiots,” the rare whiskey-drinking, fun-loving cavaliers who remembered that sports were supposed to be fun. R.I.P… Boston’s heroes.
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