David Ortiz and Union Spin Story, Should We Believe?

NEW YORK -- "I'm glad I have a clear head," David Ortiz told a few friends a couple of hours after he bellied up to baseball's confessional and bared a sliver of his soul. He was heading toward the Yankee Stadium cages, bat in hand, and the Red Sox slugger looked like a man who had just tossed aside a load of complications.

The rest of us should be so lucky. Because now baseball's steroid scandal is more convoluted than ever, the line muddled between the guilty cheaters who gained an unfair advantage by using hardcore steroids and naive players who did nothing worse than pop vitamins and guzzle protein drinks. Ortiz swears he falls in the latter category. Somewhere, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Sammy Sosa, Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte must have been screaming, "Hey, why didn't we think of that?"

---

---

In a press conference before Saturday's game between Boston and the Yankees, Ortiz admitted he had been "careless" about using over-the-counter supplements and vitamins that might have triggered a positive doping result in 2003 and caused him to land on the infamous list of drug users now in the hands of the federal government. But Ortiz denied ever using or buying steroids. He spoke without referring to a script, without conjuring some awkward story involving a cousin Yuri.

And, most telling, Ortiz had by his side Michael Weiner, the soon-to-be union chief, offering a hard proactive defense for Ortiz and any player who subsequently finds his name leaked from the list. By addressing some details about the survey test in 2003, Weiner insisted there were discrepancies between the number of players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs and the number of tests seized by the government. He paved the way for any player to declare reasonable doubt and plausible deniability.

A player on the list could be one of the eight who tested positive for a spiked dietary supplement such as 19-norandrostenedione, which was legal in 2003. A player on the list could be one of the 13 of the 96 positives disputed by the union, an argument Major League Baseball never contested because all it needed was 83 positive tests to reach the 5 percent collectively-bargained threshold required to implement a testing program. A player could be named twice on the list for failing multiple tests, a possibility Weiner tossed into the mix.

Ortiz denied ever using or buying steroids. He spoke without referring to a script, without conjuring some awkward story involving a cousin Yuri.It's a brilliant strategy, as long as the list remains tied up in a complicated court case between the players association and the government. It allows players like Ortiz to maintain they were ignorant about the chemicals they were ingesting during an era when bodies looked as if they were stuffed with silicone and home runs captivated a nation.

"I definitely was a little bit careless back in those days when I was buying supplements and vitamins over the counter -- legal supplements, legal vitamins over the counter but I never buy steroids or use steroids," Ortiz said. "I never thought that buying supplements and vitamins, it was going to hurt anybody's feelings.

"I'm not here to make any excuse or anything," said Ortiz, adding he has tested negative about 15 times since baseball's program with penalties began in 2004 and additional times for the World Baseball Classic. "I really used a lot of supplements and vitamins."

Despite everything I know and all the lies and denials I've heard players utter over the years, I'm inclined to believe Ortiz, despite the circumstantial evidence tracking his mediocre career in Minnesota to his superstar resurgence with Boston. Here's why: no union officials ever felt the need to sit beside Giambi, Ramirez or Pettitte during their so-called confessionals. If any player deserved the union's seal-of-approval, it was Pettitte, who admitted to using human growth hormone, a PED for which baseball doesn't test. Pettitte also basically confirmed a link between Roger Clemens and the steroid trail. Throughout all of Clemens' laughable denials and excuses, there's probably a reason the union hasn't felt the need to act as linebacker for the Rocket.

Are Weiner and union officials confident Ortiz won't eventually be linked to steroids such as Winstrol or Stanozolol, bodybuilder drugs that were illegal under federal laws and banned by baseball in 2003? Are they sure he never used Deca-Durabolin and HGH, the illegal stuff Giambi admitted to taking, according to his testimony before a grand jury investigating BALCO, the steroid factory that launched a thousand scandals?

Are they positive Ortiz has never experimented with Primobolan, the banned juice A-Rod confessed to taking from 2001-2003 when he was a Texas Ranger? Are they convinced there are no angry ex-trainers ready to reveal bloody gauze and needles with Ortiz's DNA? Nine days ago, when The New York Times reported that Ortiz and Ramirez were on the list, Ortiz said he needed time to do his own investigation before commenting. He wasn't the only one. The union, with its fleet of investigators and mountain of resources, had to have done its research on Ortiz before deciding to support him so vocally, while providing particulars about the 2003 survey testing it had never before publicly shared.

So why disclose them now, barely seconds after the beloved, universally adored Big Papi offered up his defense?

"It's a fair question," said Weiner, who seems much more forthright than Donald Fehr, his predecessor. "We decided that the cumulative effect of these leaks, with this last one, required us to try to set the record straight about 2003 testing. Almost all of what I said today was available in letters that we sent to Congress and has otherwise been publicly available, but it didn't seem to affect the way the stories were being reported. And we thought it was incumbent upon us to protect all the players in the union, those who have previously been tarred with this and any other players who are allegedly on the list, to set the record straight. So it really was the cumulative effect of this latest story and these latest leaks."

The players association is often lauded as one of the strongest unions in the country, but it has dropped simple pop-ups many times during this tainted era. By fighting testing and punishment for PEDs, it protected the guilty and stained the innocent. It failed to destroy the results from the 2003 tests, in the days before the government seized them in raids. As one of the parties in the case currently stalled in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the union could petition a federal judge to have the list released -- something players past and present have called for -- but Weiner rejected that idea. (MLB reiterated in a statement Saturday that it does not possess the list.)

"Sure, there are some people who say 'Why don't we just get this story over with and get the list out?' " Weiner said. "I think to do that would, one, be illegal, and two, be wrong. It's illegal because it's covered by court order, and it would be wrong because a promise was made by the commissioner's office and the union to every player who was tested in 2003 that the results would be anonymous."

A-Rod had enough enemies in and out of baseball, so it wasn't a surprise when his name was leaked to Sports Illustrated as one of the players on the list. Make no mistake, Rodriguez is responsible for tarnishing his legacy, but he also has reason to wonder where the union was that day in spring training, when he fumbled through his own clumsy confession about being "young and stupid." Weiner said the union has offered assistance and advice to every player dragged through the steroid muck. He better hope Big Papi is telling the truth, because if he isn't, the union's strong support of Ortiz will be akin to poking a stick at lions.

"We don't anticipate this coming back to haunt us," one person close to the union told me.

Rodriguez said he was sleeping during Ortiz's press conference, still exhausted after Friday night's incredible Yankee win over Boston. It was a game for the ages, decided on A-Rod's two-run homer in the bottom of the 15th inning. He's a different man since that February press conference, admittedly "freer" and no longer restrained by the weight and guilt of knowing his steroid habits would someday be revealed.

"I'm so proud of the way things came out," Rodriguez said. "I took a lot of things off my chest, and to me, since that press conference, I felt like a new man. I feel like I've been embraced by the city of New York, my teammates, coaches and manager. I feel liberated.

"I think I'm able to play better in key situations because I'm at peace with myself. I'm enjoying the game at a level that I really haven't enjoyed it before, because it's simply 100 percent about my team and winning games. In the past, I was so consumed with trying to do special things, but now I'm only worried about one thing and that's winning. This is the best I've ever gotten along with my teammates and the most at peace I've been in New York.

"The humiliation of spring training, how embarrassing and hard that was for me, it allows me to sit here now and just move forward and play baseball."

Ortiz is searching for similar peace. It should come, as long as his admission of only using over-the-counter supplements and vitamins remains true. "This past week has been a nightmare to me because I'm the kind of guy that ... I think about the fans every day," he said. He sat in baseball's confessional until the questions were exhausted, never wavering from his simple excuse about being careless.

Nearly seven hours later, with the Yankees up 5-0, Ortiz struck out looking for the game's final out, his long day punctuated by an 0-for-3 afternoon and two strikeouts. He is batting .171 since July 30, when his name was reported to be on the 2003 list. If his troubles within the batter's box prove to be his biggest worry during these uncertain times, Ortiz and his union linebackers are very blessed.