The Big Papi question



Boston Globe journalist insinuates David Ortiz is using steroids based on the fact he is a good hitter

David Ortiz


As you may or may not know, an attention seeking writer on the Boston Globe decided to openly question if Red Sox slugger David Ortiz is ‘juicing’, based solely on the fact that he was batting in the .400 region early on in the season, a feat the writer thought remarkable.

That’s where we appear to be at now. Someone hits a few balls well, the balls drop where the fielders aren't  and writers piggyback on that to ask, ‘Is hitter x roiding up?’. Talk about lazy journalism.

The laziness is shocking. The complete wilful ignorance of the facts suggests the writer knows he is talking absolute horse crap, but goes ahead thrusting the erroneous knife in, aware of just how many hits his or her article will gather. In the world of online journalism and aggregator sites, the sensational headline is king, even if it is complete hypothesis and lacks any kind of facts.

What are the facts? They couldn’t be more simple. First and foremost, MLB has tested Ortiz several times already in 2013. If he was roiding up, juicing or whatever you want to call it, we would know about it. Don’t you think the New York Post would be front and center with a gaudy headline about it, if there was any chance one of Boston’s iconic athletes was juicing?

Whatever about the above, common sense would indicate that Ortiz is not roiding up. The guy can barely walk! It took an exceptionally long time for Ortiz to come back from a very minor injury. That in itself should be evidence enough, as known roid users recover from simple and indeed very severe physical injuries much faster while they are juicing up. Take for example Ray Lewis, the former Ravens linebacker. Fair or not, questions were asked about him as he recovered from a severe injury that should have taken 3-4 months to recover from, in just 3 weeks. People asked questions because it is a known side effect of roid usage that other physical injuries heal incredibly fast.

The fact is, if Ortiz was roiding up, not only would he be crushing the baseball, he would be running the bases like Jacoby Ellsbury, not David Ross with a piano on his back.

You know what, if you want to make snide remarks and comments without any real basis, fine, whatever, plenty of writers are going to chase a few hits without much basis for their article, that’s a given these days. The worst part for me is treating the readers as stupid.

We know Ortiz is probably not juicing up, because if he was, he wouldn’t look like one of the Molina brothers trying to run the bases.

We’re not stupid, stop writing articles as if we were.


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