A Rod Villain / Big Papi Celebrated

In the aftermath of Bonds, A Rod was presumed to be the clean heir to the legit HR record. No such predictions were affixed to Ortiz. Therefore, A Rod let "us" down.

 

Bonds and A-Rod are both colossal pricks by all accounts, and Papi is seen (rightly or wrongly) as the affable big lug. That makes a difference. How often have you heard about Pettitte's transgressions, or even Giambi's, in comparison to Clemens? It's complicated, but it seems that if guys are likeable and/or somewhat offer a mea culpa, then they get off the hook. And then there's the fact A-Rod and Bonds were threatening some of baseball's most notable records, as already mentioned. And A-Rod is MUCH deeper in this than Ortiz. We've been hearing about A-Rod and Biogenesis for the past few years, but Ortiz hasn't been implicated recently that I know of.

 

Still a double standard for same transgression.

 

Ortiz has backing of a ton of pied pipers in the Boston media.

 

No shit. You wanted to know how this is so. So I gave my opinion. Ortiz's transgression was 10 years ago. A-Rod is still in the middle of it. You might have heard he is currently suing MLB over this shit. I haven't heard the words PED and Ortiz used together in years.

 

Maybe if Selena Roberts wrote a book about him or MLB targeted him like they
did ARod we might have heard PED and Ortiz together.

I am not a big ARod fan but I am a fan of fairness. I wonder what teamate Ryan
Dempster thinks of Big Papi.

 

I'm not saying you're wrong. But a lot is working against A-Rod. The big contract, his arrogance, his talent without the use of PEDs, his perceived lack of production when it counts, playing in the largest media market for the most popular team. He was one of the biggest stars in MLB, which is why he and Bonds and Clemens were treated much more harshly. That, and people really don't like them. Nobody's really talking about Braun anymore because very few people really give a shit about Braun.

 

Why do people assume Rodriguez had great talent without PED use?

Nobody here argues harder that these guys be considered innocent until proven guilt, but once they are proven guilty? I don't think you can assume they were ever clean.

 

Fair enough. I considered couching that statement, but he has been an elite talent since high school, so I doubt he has been using all this time. I certainly could be wrong.

 

There are plenty of athletes who start using steroids in high school. I'm just not going to assume either way.

 

Can you ever imagine, in your wildest dreams, something happening in New York (bombing, terrorism, etc) and A-Rod taking the mic and saying "This is our fucking city!" and it coming off as genuine? It would be the laughing stock of the internet and beyond.

It's like politics. Some guys have "it" and some guys so desperately want to be liked, they come across as frauds in everything they do. Papi is Bill Clinton. A-Rod is John Kerry or Mitt Romney.

 

Definitely true. Not sure why you're seizing on this, but OK. I tend to believe he had tremendous raw talent and didn't use PEDs until well into his MLB career, but I certainly don't know that. And I don't assume it either. It's just a gut feeling. Nobody knows.