A Rod Villain / Big Papi Celebrated

Well, the Red Sox do get way more of a positive spin than the Yankees, even though they're both big-spending big-market teams that use money in amounts most teams can't dream of to solve their problems.

But the Yankees are the Evil Empire while the Red Sox are often perceived as lovable underdogs. At least part of that is because of their history -- the Yankees won championship after championship for decades while the best the Sox could do was get close before "tragically" failing. But now that they've won two World Series titles recently, you'd think that would change.

 

It has changed, in a lot of people's minds. The Red Sox, or maybe it's just their often-insufferable fans, are now widely looked upon as a bunch of entitled douchebags.

 

To my point in Gammons daily column titled "PEDs Lasting Impact On The MLB
Postseason" talks about the unfairness of Peralta playing with this line:

"There are several Red Sox players who have complained privately that Peralta is allowed to play. They wonder what remains in his body."

No mention of Big Papi anywhere in column though.

 

That's not entirely true. Rodriguez came partially clean, but continued to mix in lies, when he was caught.

 

Why does that matter? Both got busted cheating.

 

When Ortiz was proven to have done it, it wasn't against the rules.

 

Ortiz and A Rod were on the same 2003 list. Big difference thanks to Selena Roberts is
that only ARod had subsequent SI story / book and of course the new Bio-genesis allegations.

 

Has ARod tested positive since 2003?

 

I blame the Red Sox homers at ESPN.

 

Part of it is trajectory, I think. Guys like Bonds, A-Rod (Clemens too) started knocking on the doors of all-time-ness. Either via single-season records or career marks. Ortiz hasn't pushed toward that by chasing Maris' 61 or Aaron's 755.

Even guys like Piazza ("best hitting catcher of all time") and Palmeiro (500-3,000 specialness) generated backlash by virtue of the historical claims they were achieving. But unless the debate over greatest DH ever really heats up, and Ortiz crowds Edgar Martinez or Frank Thomas, he won't elicit the same resistance as A-Rod from many people.

 

My recollection is that PED use was already against the rules before the testing program began. It's just that no one ever got caught because no one was looking for it (because there was no testing program).

I could be mistaken (I'm not in a position to look it up right now), but I seem to remember reading that in more than one place.

 

It's a bit of a gray area, but it was clearly viewed as cheating at the time and we're not talking about formal punishment here, we're talking about public opinion.