(as Manny Alexander is not a current member of the Red Sox, he’s probably not one of the unnamed players referenced by Peter Gammons below).
For a franchise that reaped tremendous rewards from the PED-assisted production of Manny Ramirez (not to mention the output of an unusually clutch DH that’s been in their employ for a decade), the Boston Red Sox seem quite prickly when it comes to ethical matters. Weeks after Alex Rodriguez was deliberately targeted by Ryan Dempster, Peter Gammons claims the Red Sox have an issue with Tigers SS Jhonny Peralta’s role in a postseason that began shortly after he’d served a 50 game suspension.
There are several Red Sox players who have complained privately that Peralta is allowed to play. They wonder what remains in his body. But as Jonny Gomes says, “we all play by the rules, and he is playing by the rules. So go out and play.”
This is about a risk-and-reward thing, and the reward for Jhonny Peralta and the Detroit Tigers is far more important than a so-called moral judgment about so-called “cheaters.”
We do not know exactly when the PEDS go out of their system; we don’t know if, indeed, the chemists have figured out how to mask whatever they’ve concocted. In the 1988 ALCS, when the Fenway Park crowd chanted “Steroids” and Jose Canseco laughed and flexed his biceps, it did not intimidate him; he was the American League MVP and thought he was on his way to an A-Rod fortune.
It’s all in the rules. And if Peralta is the MVP of the ALCS or the World Series, the Tigers will have won, and we will forever be left to remember that the risk and the punishment was worth the reward.
Gammons does take care to point out the Tigers’ handling of Peralta is marked different from the Giants leaving Melky Cabrera off their postseason roster last October, though they’d already benefited greatly from his performance earlier in the year.
Lumping in Manny Ramirez with David Ortiz is guilt by association…and that association is less than arbitrary given that Man-Ram didn’t test positive till after he wore a Sox uniform. Implying that Ortiz has ever done anything wrong reminds me of that wonderful writer who alludes to Mike Piazza’s backne as his smoking-gun proof of PED use. I demand better from CTSB on those three occasions per year that I log onto this counterweight to the Mushnicks of the world.
Truthfully, every team in MLB has had PED users on its roster so what’s the point of calling out anyone for PED use at this point, whether its Peralta or A-rod, this sport has been turned into WWE wrestling so this pot/kettle bullshit at this late stage of the game is disappointing mostly because it reminds me too much of the delusional postings of all Yankees blowhards on the comments sections of EVERY sports site. Peralta is a piece of garbage who served his sentence and I don’t give two shits about him. But I don’t know why opposition to his presence should put a morbidly obese DH’s stats into question unless you think that Piazza’s backne is a good enough reason to question his obvious purity. And if he wasn’t a Met would you have already thrown him under the bus? (Answer: absolutely).
“Implying that Ortiz has ever done anything wrong reminds me of that wonderful writer who alludes to Mike Piazza’s backne as his smoking-gun proof of PED use.”
OK, but my allusion to Ortiz isn’t based on backne or Papi’s amazing career revival after donning a Red Sox uniform. He tested positive in 2003 (though he’s repeatedly denied it was for PED’s), and if anyone in the Boston organization is going to speculate about what Peralta does or doesn’t still have in his system, it would stand to reason you could ask the same questions of Ortiz circa 2004 and 2007.
Of course, Ortiz broke no actual rules as they stood in 2003, and if he continued to benefit from prior PED use in subsequent years or months, there’d be no way of policing it. Just as there’s no reasonable way to take Peralta out of the Tigers lineup after he’s served his time.
“if (Mike Piazza) wasn’t a Met would you have already thrown him under the bus? (Answer: absolutely).”
And I’d have asked the bus to back up over him, too!
Gammons has become a major pain in my ass.
He recently compared Bud Selig to George W. Bush as a way of paying a compliment to the retiring commish. Quoting an MLB owner, Gammons said on ESPN that Bush “was the greatest foreign policy President since Harry Truman because of his ability to create consensus.” PG gushed that Bud Selig had a similar gift in carrying out the daunting task of “creating consensus” among the strong willed and unruly stable of owners in MLB.
You have to rub a whole lot more pine tar than I ever used on that claim to make it stick. PG these days is like the Stones circa “Steel Wheels” : PG writing for the Boston Globe back in my day was like the Replacements on Twin/Tone.