Major League Baseball

After drug report, it's innocence lost in Boston

Published Jul. 31, 2009 7:39 a.m. ET

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When the Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years in 2004, there was euphoria among their fans. When they won a second title three years later, the elation was ratcheted further.

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After going nearly a century between championships, suddenly the Red Sox seemed on the verge of establishing a dynasty.

What made the winning sweeter still was the fact that the Red Sox did it all without the taint of steroids. While other teams were tarred by PEDs, the Red Sox were improbably, even miraculously clean.

Sure, some former players (Roger Clemens, Jose Canseco) were knee-deep in scandal. And some players arrived with rumored past associations (Eric Gagne). But at least as far as MLB testing was concerned, the Red Sox were on the up-and-up.

That the arch-rivals Yankees were deeply implicated by the Mitchell Report and other investigations only made Red Sox fans strut more and puff out their chests farther. Cheating? That was for the Evil Empire. Meanwhile, two World Series wins and moral superiority proved to be an intoxicating combination.

Even when one of their biggest former stars, Manny Ramirez, was nailed for a banned substance earlier this season, Sox fans could easily explain away the transgression. Didn't happen when he was in Boston.

Thursday, however, the moral high ground came crashing down under its own weight. The two premier sluggers of those title teams, Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, had each tested positive during MLB's provisional survey testing in 2003.




Goodbye moral superiority, hello rationalization.

The news undoubtedly causes a reassessment of the team's two World Series victories. But most World Series winners — dating back to the mid-1990s — have had at least one player on their roster known to have used steroids, or at the very least, players who have been strongly implicated in PED use.

The 2001 Diamondbacks? Check (Matt Williams) The 1997 Marlins? Check (Gary Sheffield). The 2002 Angels? Check (Troy Glaus). The 2000 Yankees? Check (Clemens, Canseco, Andy Pettitte, Jason Grimsley).

Tainted World Series winners? Sadly, that's become about as traditional as champagne spray and victory parades.

Steroids have touched the game in every conceivable fashion for the last decade — altering the record books, rearranging history, and impacting how scouts and executives evaluate talent. To think that it was going to leave one particular franchise unblemished is the very height of naivete. Turns out the Sox didn't corner the market on clean living — they just took longer to get caught.

The fact is that the Red Sox were lucky to go this long without getting any PED-related dirt on them. Lucky that two of the biggest alleged suppliers (Kurt Radomski and Brian McNamee) worked for the two franchises in New York, which in turn provided so much fodder for the Mitchell Report. And lucky, too, perhaps that the "Mitchell" in the Mitchell Report is none other than Sen. George Mitchell, a native New Englander, a lifelong Red
Sox fan and, most curiously, listed as "director" on the Red Sox masthead.

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