Somewhere, Robin Yount weeps.

You can’t even begin to imagine how much I hope the allegations against you are untrue. I don’t want to believe that you used performance-enhancing drugs, but part of me just knows that it’s true.

Image source: Inquisitr

Until yesterday, if someone had told me that you were on the juice, I probably would’ve backhanded them across the face and laughed at them. Now, this once-unfathomable notion appears to be all too true.

Mr. Braun, you are already an icon in the city of Milwaukee. You and Aaron Rodgers have the state of Wisconsin in the palm of your hands. You are, no – were, an unblemished idol to all of us Cheeseheads, and we placed you high up on a pedestal.

If these allegations are true, you – as one of the MLB’s brightest young stars and the reigning NL MVP – now will have put a huge asterisk next to not only your spectacular 2011 campaign, but you will also have tainted a magical season for the entire Brewers club.

I remember when you first came up to the majors during the 2007 season like it was just yesterday. It was a season to remember, as you won yourself the NL Rookie of the Year award, and I’m still convinced that what you did during not only 2007, but every year up to this one was completely clean.

In fact, that’s what angers me the most about this whole thing. It’s not like you are Barry Bonds cranking out 70-homer seasons. No, you can hit for power and average because of your spectacular swing and amazing bat speed. I just can’t understand why the hell you would ever even consider touching performance-enhancing drugs. You are a natural at the game of baseball, but apparently that’s not good enough.

Back in 2009, Bud Selig put you in a group of young superstars that he felt were doing everything the right way, and I don’t think that there was anyone that would’ve disputed that. But you betrayed Commissioner Selig’s trust, you betrayed your teammates’ trust, you betrayed the fans’ trust, and you betrayed the game of baseball.

Unless it turns out that what your camp is claiming about a 2nd clean test is true, you will never be able to reach the legendary status that at one time you seemed destined to obtain.

With Prince Fielder almost certainly leaving the team, we the fans were counting on you to come up big in 2012 and take over as the undisputed leader of this ballclub. With Albert Pujols leaving St. Louis and many of the key pieces from last year’s division-winning team coming back, it looked like Milwaukee had a very realistic chance of returning to the postseason in 2012.

But with you, in all likelihood, missing the first 50 games of the season, the Brewers are in deep trouble.

I really like Ron Roenicke as a manager, but he’s going to have to pull a Houdini to get this team to stay pace with the Cardinals while you’re gone. We still have a good team, but the absence of both you and Fielder is an enormous kick to the groin.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend I will hate you for the rest of your career, because I won’t. I hope you stay in Milwaukee forever, because you are, quite simply, a phenom.

When Alex Rodriguez came out and admitted to taking steroids, you said that the best thing for him to do was to come completely clean. Well the same applies for you. If you did indeed take performance-enhancing drugs, come clean. Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The public will look much more kindly on you if you just tell us what really happened. Don’t be a Barry Bonds, Ryan. Try to salvage your reputation by doing the right thing and you will be forgiven by the city of Milwaukee.

Don’t sink to the level of Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens, and Sammy Sosa. They represent all that’s wrong with the game of baseball, but you don’t have to be one of them. You still have a chance to be Ryan Braun, the greatest player to ever put on a Milwaukee Brewers uniform.

Sincerely,

A Crushed Brewers Fan

Or maybe by tomorrow it will be ESPN needing to make a major apology/retraction, or not…

I had The World-Wide Leader on following the Indiana Hoosiers upset win over Kentucky in college basketball, and that, and the ugly Xavier/Cincinnati basket-brawl, were the lead stories before plugging the upcoming Heisman Trophy ceremony and going into commercial.

Then I hear the dreaded words ‘Breaking News’ and Ryan Braun’s mug on the screen.

On a college hoops Saturday in the middle of December? This can’t be good.

The bombshell proved to be possibly worse than that.

Suddenly Prince Fielder potentially leaving Milwaukee is by far not the biggest headache with the Brewers organization. The man who’d been hailed earlier this summer for committing himself contractually to the franchise until 2021 now is.

With one ‘Outside The Lines’ report, ‘Brewers win NL Central’, ‘Brewers advance to NLCS’, and ‘Braun wins National League MVP’ are no longer the top baseball stories in Milwaukee in 2011.
At least for now, hat has been replaced with ‘Report: Braun Tests Positive for PEDs.

The last ten years has taught everyone not to be shocked about anything regarding baseball’s on-going performance enhancing scandal. That said, Ryan Braun getting popped, reportedly, would be a shocker.

On the Major League level this past season, just one player had been tested positive, Manny Ramirez – which gave hope that the grand old game has finally turned the corner on the out-of-control PED use which reached its apex in the late 1990’s/early 2000’s.

Well now, IF ESPN is right, the list would expand to Manny Ramirez and Ryan Braun.

It should be pointed out that at this juncture this is merely a ‘report’, with nothing official coming out of MLB or the Milwaukee Brewers.

Still, it took less than five minutes after ESPN went on-air with the story at their talking heads were already discussing how Braun’s rep will never be the same and his early Hall of Fame hopes have now taken a major hit – even pointing to Jeff Bagwell only getting 41% of the HOF vote last year based simply on ‘guilt’ from the era he played in.

To be fair, the ESPN piece reported the following:

‘Since being informed of the results, Braun has been disputing his case. A source close to Braun said that when he was told about the positive test (for a synthetic testosterone), he immediately requested to be tested again. That second test, the source said, was not positive. Those close to Braun believe that the difference between the two tests will show that the first test was invalid.’

Braun also was quoted in a later story by USA Today’s Bob Nightengale of the result being ‘B.S.’ TNT basketball analyst Reggie Miller also posted on social media that his neighbor (Braun) had informed him of the result being ‘bogus’.

History does not bode well for Braun however; no player has ever successfully appealed a failed test.

I would love to go with the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ line right now, but historically it is ‘guilty, then proven guilty’. Maybe there are ‘highly unusual circumstances’ in play, as the Braun camp attests.  And I can see a 50-game suspension eventually being whittled down to 25 games before the 2012 season starts. Or maybe Braun beats the rap and avoids suspension altogether.

But the damage may already been done. Albert Pujols did not test positive this year. Justin Verlander did not test positive. Prince Fielder did not test positive. Matt Kemp did not test positive. Josh Hamilton did not test positive.

But reportedly Ryan Braun has and potentially may have to carry that going forward. And for those who’ve asked in the past why Barry Bonds was targeted by the media/fans while other stars (who didn’t get busted) were not. Don’t worry, Braun will get hammered every bit as much as Bonds/Palmeiro/Clemens/Gagne/Ramirez, etc., etc, even if cleared.

And for those, like me, who had pointed out how Braun’s stats ranked right alongside Alex Rodriguez his first three to four years in the league? Guess you can now also compare them in the PED category.

Personally, as a Brewers fan, I had taken solace in the fact the biggest PED issues were with other teams, even though it’s obvious it existed in all 30 MLB locker rooms:

Sosa with the Cubs. Big Mac with the Cards. Giambi with the Yankees. Bonds with the Giants. Man-Ram with the Red Sox/Dodgers. Gagne with the Dodgers.

I remember Geoff Jenkins hitting five home runs over two days versus the Expos back in 2001; then Jenkins and Jeromy Burnitz combining for six home runs in a game later on that same season – and wondered aloud if it was all legit. Or was it simply not being noticed because they were in Milwaukee and Barry Bonds was hitting 73 home runs with the Giants and Luis Gonzalez was hitting 57 for the Diamondbacks?

My personal suspicions are completely unfair to Mr. Jenkins, Mr. Burnitz, and Mr. Gonzalez. But they and others (Jeff Bagwell) were guilty by simply competing in that era. But if the Braun report is true, it would give proof that the problem hasn’t been completely eradicated. As I’ve said before,  just one positive test in a 20-year career can ruin everything. The game’s top-stars are responsible for maintaining their reputations literally to the grave and even beyond.

As I’m completing this writing, Tom Hardicourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that he just spoke to someone familiar with the details of Braun’s test, and was assured he will be found innocent.

There will be plenty of twists and turns on this developing story over the next few days. Either RB8 is going to be roasted all over and considered guilty, or ESPN is going to have a lot of egg on their faces.

Ryan’s hope is that it’ll somehow be the latter.

But this morning a couple of thoughts occurred to me.

First, my good buddy @WorldofIsaac sent me a link to the following tweet from Greg Wyshynski (aka Puck Daddy):

Has Jerod Morris opined on Damien Cox not getting same “Outside The Lines” treatment he got for steroid speculation? Would love to hear it.

As Isaac reminded me, few individuals in the sports blogosphere are as revered as Greg Wyshynski. I’m not even a hockey fan and I know that. Thus, I immediately thought that it would be wise for me to pay attention to such a call for opinion.

The second thought that occurred to me was, what exactly is so wrong with being recognized for the Raul Ibanez story from last year? Sure, if I was ashamed of the story I’d hide in the shadows and hope it faded from memory. But I’m not ashamed of it, not by a longshot.

I was neither malicious nor cunning, I held firm where I felt I should and admitted fault where I felt I should, I learned a tremendous amount, and was able to be a part of volcanic debate about bloggers and the mainstream media that was influential and a long time coming. It was an unlikely series of events that brought the debate to my doorstep, but as the great philosopher Rashed Wallace once said during a post game interview: it is what it is and it do what it do.

So, for those interested, I will now weigh in on this season’s steroid speculation story, which involves the red hot Jose Bautista, a hockey blogger named Damien Cox, and a pretty obvious double standard in how it’s being covered.

First, the background (quickly), in case you missed the story.

As any fantasy baseball player knows, Jose Bautista is hitting out of his mind this year. We are not even in September yet and Bautista has 40 HRs, 95 RBIs, and an OPS of .973. His previous full season career highs for these three stats are: 16, 63, and .757 (all of which occurred in different seasons).

To say that Bautista’s power surge has come out of nowhere this year would be a tremendous understatement.

Well, this past Sunday Damien Cox, a hockey columnist and associate sports editor for The Toronto Star, decided to put his spin on the story. Cox is described on his blog as someone who “takes turns stirring up trouble and chuckling at the foibles of the sporting world.” Thus, he decided to stir up some trouble:

For the following unpopular question, blame Major League baseball and all the nonsense it has spewed over the past decade.

Don’t blame me.

When it comes to Jose Bautista, how is it exactly that at the age of 29 he’s suddenly become the most dangerous power hitter in baseball?

Chance? Healthy living? Diet? New contact lenses? Comfortable batting gloves?

Anyone reading about the Roger Clemens perjury case this week, which of course brings up all of baseball’s tawdry steroid history, should at least be willing to wonder about Bautista’s sudden transformation into the dinger king.

He continues on for another half page or so, essentially reiterating these thoughts in different words.

For comparison’s sake, here is what I said about Raul Ibanez last year:

Thirdly, it’s time for me to begrudgingly acknowledge the elephant in the room: any aging hitter who puts up numbers this much better than his career averages is going to immediately generate suspicion that the numbers are not natural, that perhaps he is under the influence of some sort of performance enhancer. And since I was not able to draw any absolute parallels between his prodigously improved HR rate and his new ballpark’s hitter-friendliness, it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility that “other” performance enhancers could be part of the equation.

Sorry Raul Ibanez and Major League Baseball, that’s just the era that we are in — testing or no testing.

If you just read that excerpt from my post and compare it to what Cox says about Bautista, you might conclude that we essentially said the exact same thing; and, at least in part, we did.

• Cox’s main idea: Jose Bautista is performing well above his established norms; he’s a baseball player; we have been conditioned to wonder if he is using a PED and it’s reasonable to pose the thought.
• My main idea: Raul Ibanez is performing well above his established norms; he’s a baseball player; we have been conditioned to wonder if he is using a PED and it’s reasonable to post the thought.

The difference, of course, which is obvious if you just glace at the two articles, is that I spent 85-90% of the time actively trying to disprove the then-commonly discussed notion that Ibanez might be juicing. The genesis of the post was another manager in one of my fantasy leagues posing the question. I wrote the article to find objective reasons to disprove it, finally concluding that I couldn’t, which led to me making a blanket statement about all baseball players while using Raul Ibanez as the microcosm.

Cox, on the other hand, simply tosses out the question that he’s “gotta” ask, includes names like Roger Clemens, Troy Glaus, and Brady Anderson for good measure, and leaves it at that.

A recent post at Drunk Jays Fans summed it up best:

Fortunately for my conscience, Jerod’s piece proved to be mostly an analysis of possible reasons for Ibanez’s incredibly hot start (park factors, competition) that concluded with a lament about the inevitable PED speculation that would come. Cox, on the other hand, offered up counter-theories only in the most sarcastic, piece-of-shit-like way. So, while there may be a tinge of hypocrisy in my defending Morris and not Cox, I really do think that, if you actually read what Jerod wrote—which, if I recall correctly, was kind of the major fucking problem with how the media treated the Ibanez in the first place—he’s hardly being accusatory, if at all. Cox totally is.

I agree, and continue to wish that more people had actually read my piece before passing judgment last year. But alas, this is the Internet we’re talking about here. I used a title that was far more provocative than I intended it to be, and most people never read any further. Actually, I’m not sure most people even read the entire title. They saw “The Curious Case of Raul Ibanez: Steroid Speculation…” and then dropped everything to email John Gonzalez that some Midwest blogger was accusing Ibanez of using steroids…even though I didn’t.

But this column isn’t so much about reliving last year’s news as it is about gauging how the coverage and overall landscape have changed now that a similar story has popped up this year. The most obvious aspect of how the Cox-Bautista story has been covered differently as last year’s Ibanez story is the striking double standard that has been applied to Cox’s comments.

We have established, and I’m not really sure it’s debatable, that Cox’s comments about Bautista are far more flippant and accusatory than mine were. Yet, where is Ken Rosenthal decrying Cox’s disrespect for the written word? Where is the Outside the Lines special analyzing the giant schism between bloggers and the mainstream media and — oh, that’s right; Cox isn’t technically a blogger. He wrote his comments on a blog, but he’s a sports editor for The Star, meaning he’s part of the in-crowd.

Yes, I think that has a lot to do with it. Part of the reason no one is out to tar and feather Damien Cox on national TV, as good ‘ol Ken was clearly attempting to do to me, is because of his position. There simply is no other reasonable explanation. And plenty of bloggers, as well as commenters and tweeters, are taking up the fight and pointing out this clear example of mainstream media hypocrisy, of an obvious double standard being applied.

But to simplify the issue down just to that would be foolhardy.

I think another contributing factor is that things are different now as compared to last year at this time. The landscape is different, the tone and amplification of the blogger/MSM debate is different, the steroids issue in baseball is different.

And, honestly, I think people may just be tired of it all.

I know that I’m sick of talking about steroids, as evidenced by the fact that you’ve heard nary a peep about the subject from me on this blog since last season. And as the lines continue to blur between what a “blogger” is and what a “mainstream media member” is, what’s the point in continuing to shout at eachother about varying shades of gray?

Because of the daily grind of the 24-hour sports news cycle, and moments like last year’s Ibanez story and the Leitch-Bissinger debate before that, the sports media and sports blogging community have slowly but surely reached an uneasy alliance that, for the most part, benefits everyone involved. The online landscape is still quite Darwinian in that survival of the fittest necessitates a constant race for pageviews, but people are also coming to the correct understanding that pageviews are not a zero sum game. Working together can in fact be beneficial and all boats really can rise together.

Mix all of it in – Cox’s job title, steroids fatigue, less blogger/MSM sensitivity – and it creates the much more muted response to Damien Cox’s post than what mine received last year.

I’m certainly not bitter about it or upset in any way. I didn’t ask him too, and I certainly didn’t think it would be the case at the time, but Ken Rosenthal did more for the credibility and exposure of Midwest Sports Fans than anyone has in the 2+ years of this site’s existence. Sure, I had to sit there on national TV trying to get a word in edgewise while looking like a recluse who’d never seen the sun, but it was a tremendous experience that I’ll never forget nor would I ever trade. Damien Cox should be so lucky so have such righteous indignation heaped upon him.

And as for Cox’s words, no I do not think he is inherently wrong to raise the question he raised.

My brother has Jose Bautista on a couple of fantasy teams and we’ve randomly joked a few times about whether his numbers are legit or not. I haven’t looked, but I would assume that there have even been other blog posts or message board forums that have mentioned and discussed this. (Last year, people overlooked the fact that I was actually the third blogger to mention Raul Ibanez and the possibility that he could be on steroids. I just happened to win the Lottery of Internet Exposure Serendipity when John Gonzalez mentioned my post.) When a guy goes from a career high of 16 HR to 40 before September, steroids will be brought up. It’s inevitable, despite baseball’s history of outliers that Keith Law astutely brought up recently.

Here is where I diverge from Damien Cox, however: I would have raised the Bautista question differently, with what I consider to be more tact and fairness; and I can say that because I did. As mentioned above, even though Cox and I essentially concluded the same general point about baseball, I spent far more time trying to disprove my hypothesis about the individual than prove it. That matters, I believe, and manifests intent.

Which is a perfect segue to my concluding topic.

Of all the articles I read yesterday dealing either directly or tangentially with this topic, I actually appreciated Geoff Baker’s the most. Baker, you may recall, was one of my harshest critics last year, but also the person from whom I learned the most when looking at what I’d written through the prism of his criticism.

Here is what Baker wrote yesterday:

You’ll remember how we engaged in one of our typically healthy debates back then about Jerod Morris, a blogger who seemed to suggest in a headline and the text of his post that Raul Ibanez was taking steroids.

That spurred all type of arguing back and forth, but the more depressing upshot I took away from it was that there are thousands, if not millions of people out there who believe that blogs are not held to as high a standard as traditional media when it comes to truth and libel law and that just about anything can be written on the internet.

Not true. And the story I’ve linked to spells that out.

Let’s not get into the technicalities of what was written in the whole Morris thing again. I know some of you don’t feel that he intended to accuse Ibanez, while some of us think he tried to soft-pedal his way in there and did so sloppily. That’s ancient history and only the reminder I’m using to bring up the greater issue here.

That even though the public at large now has the power of the written word in its hands like never before, it’s a power that must be used wisely.

What was most interesting to me about reading Baker’s piece yesterday is that it doesn’t mention Cox or Bautista at all. His post was written as a commentary on this article, which details the increasing liability risk faced by people who write blogs and even comments.

Baker and I disagree on what my intention with the Ibanez piece was, but his article, my email exchange with him afterwards, and the entirety of the Ibanez story taught me a valuable lesson about considering the potential impact of hitting the PUBLISH button and putting a piece of content out there on the Internet. I may not write for ESPN or FanHouse or even the Toronto Star, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t take the words written on Midwest Sports Fans seriously, especially the subject of them.

And for all bloggers, Baker’s point is a good one. Too often, we disrespect ourselves by thinking that our words don’t carry the weight that they do, both in terms of influence and, increasingly, potential liability. A normal post on MSF may only get a few hundred pageviews, but it only takes one link from a big site or one mention from a ballplayer to turn a few hundred into 50,000; and you never know what post it will be, so you might as well just assume that it could be any one of them. Hence, it’s a good idea to consider the probable reaction of the masses, of any individuals explicitly named, and to be prepared to defend your words and point of view should you get called on to do so.

I have to imagine that Damien Cox had a pretty good idea that the question about Jose Bautista that he had to ask publicly would create a strong reaction. He’s been in the business too long not to understand what will create a firestorm and what won’t. Steroids + Player Name x Source is a good equation for figuring out how great the firestorm will be, but there will undoubtedly be a loud and swift reaction to any such story.

In Cox’s case, the reaction just happened to be far more swift and vociferous from commenters and bloggers, rather than his mainstream media peers. The reaction to my story was different, for all of the reasons I’ve addressed in this post. In both cases, the players were able to address the issue publicly; in Ibanez’s case, everyone moved on; and in Bautista’s case, everyone will too.

The ubiquitous reality is that there is always another sports news cycle just around the corner, ready to chew up and spit out the latest hot story. Honestly, I’m just glad I got to be a part of one, double standards and all.

**********

* – Jose Bautista photo credit: Jamie Squire/Getty Images North America via Zimbio.com

Monday’s New York Times Opinion Section, Ross Douthat, who normally scribes on political and social matters, delved into the sports world with a fascinating commentary.

Though the ethos surrounded Roger Clemens and steroids in baseball, the theme was also about the perpetual cheating that’s gone on throughout baseball’s history, including the recently-deceased Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard round the world,” and the controversy still surrounding that at bat six decades later.

Here are some excerpts, but read it in its entirety (under 800 words, the bold is mine):

“That was sports at its best, surely. A day for honorable ballplayers, not corrupt multimillionaires. A day untainted by cheating or dishonesty. A game reduced to a pitcher, a batter and a single pitch — and the crackle of a radio man shouting “the Giants win the pennant!”

“Except that cheating did taint Thomson’s famous shot. For decades, it was rumored that the Giants’ amazing 1951 stretch run — they made up a 13-game deficit to force the playoff with the Dodgers — had been abetted by a sign-stealing system devised by their manager, Leo Durocher. Finally, the truth leaked out: For the last 10 weeks of the season, and throughout the showdown with the Dodgers, the Giants used a centerfield telescope and a complex system of signals to tell their batters what pitch was coming next.

“Somewhere, waiting for his day in court, Roger Clemens is probably telling himself similar things. Whatever the truth about the drugs he took or didn’t take, he wants to believe — and wants us to believe — that all his achievements, all his wins and strikeouts, belong to him and not to any secret advantage he obtained.

“Thomson was caught up in a team-wide escapade, whereas Clemens’s drug-related decisions were his and his alone. But when we think about the outcast pitcher — and about the whole steroids scandal — we should keep their parallel stories in mind, and perhaps judge modern athletes more leniently.

“Not because the steroids scandal wasn’t distinctively ugly, and distinctively devastating. But it’s part of a pattern that runs back through all of baseball’s past — through the amphetamines that veterans pressed on younger players, the spitballs pitchers boasted about throwing, and every other edge that athletes turned to in duress.”

Make of this what you will, but I agree with the writer. Today in sports, but especially baseball, we have a petulant media — think Jim Gray, Peter Gammons, Bob Costas, Tim McCarver, John Clayton, Mel Kiper, or even your local beat writer — that think they set the story. And when we give them the power to decide who gets into the Hall of Fame, it’s even worse.

Pete Rose deserves to be in Cooperstown, just as “cheaters” like Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle and many other “unsavory” legends.  I am no fan of Roger Clemens, but I won’t be arrogant and vilify him any moreso than those past players or Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa, Mark Mcgwire…or the massive amount of NFL players on steroids, who rape or beat women, murder people or dogs, “make it rain,” etc; or the NBA players who’ve done the same; or the ignorant MLB players speaking nonsense on the Arizona Immigration law and politics.

Cut the crap and be consistent and fair.

Big Mac issued a statement through the Associated Press early in the day, and then sat for a very compelling hour-long interview with Bob Costas earlier this evening on the MLB Network.

Here is the gist of McGwire’s story, if I can be so presumptuous as to summarize it in one sentence:

McGwire began using steroids to combat the well-chronicled rash of injuries that periodically derailed his career, but he believes that he derived no tangible baseball benefit from his PED use other than better health.

(Note: You can watch the first part of McGwire’s interview with Bob Costas here, and I’m sure they’ll be posting more of it later this evening and tomorrow.)

I don’t completely buy what he’s selling – I think he’s being disingenuous or at least delusional by not acknowledging that PEDs helped him hit for more power – but I do give him credit for at least facing some of the music.

As you’ll see in the video below, there are still plenty of McGwire contemporaries who have yet to do the same thing.

Video: Cheating Liars (originally created for Flash Sports Tonight)

Little did I know when KVB and I wrote this song some 4-5 years ago – before Roger Clemens’ name had ever been officially linked with steroid/PED use – that we’d still be talking about it in January of 2010.

And if Sosa or Bonds or Clemens, among others, decide to speak publicly about their steroid use like ARod and Big Mac have this year, we’ll all be talking about it then too.

At which point I can trot out this video again, and why not? Our ode to steroids in sports just gets more relevant by the year.

**********

* – Mark McGwire photo credit: Deadspin

I realized this morning that every day there is one blog post I look forward to more than any other: The Big Lead’s morning link roundups…which, coincidentally, has not been posted yet this morning.

WTF?

This unexpected void in my morning gave me the opportunity to participate in an exciting new morning activity: thinking. And what I got to thinking and wondering about is why I’m not putting together a similar post on a daily basis for you, our trusty MSF reader.

So I decided to start doing it. And if the old adage “imitation is the most sincere form of flattery” is true, then consider yourself flattered TBL. We’ll obviously put our own spin on things, but we’re not trying to hide the source of our inspiration.

Look for this new feature every morning, probably around 7-7:15 Central Time. And if you’re a blogger or an interested reader who likes sharing good stuff you read, send me tips.

And now, without further ado, onto this morning’s WYNTR (that stands for What You Need To Read), sponsored by birthday girl Kim Kardashian (who probably has a better chance of completing that pass than Derek Anderson…)

Hot Topics

Nothing is a hotter topic this morning than the breaking news of Steve Phillips’ affair with an ESPN production assistant. (Hat tip to TBL on this one.)

Our buddy MoonDog discusses the new political action committee that is taking on the BCS.

The LA Daily News discusses Manny Ramirez going back to his Manny ways by skipping the end of his team’s last game against the Phillies to shower.

Mark Cuban has opined about steroid use, and let’s just say that his thoughts on the issue are different than, well, 99% of people who have commented publicly on the issue. Could steroids actually be a good thing?

If you haven’t yet seen it, the always hilarious folks at Tirico Suave have produced a nice animated gif breakdown of ARod getting a nice handful of The Captain’s ass a couple days ago. Well done.

Midwest sports news

In Browns news, LB D’Qwell Jackson is out for the season with a shoulder injury while his coach, Eric Mangini, is being compared to the fat kid who floated away in Willy Wonka’s river of chocolate. Being a Browns fan is great, huh?

In Bears news, Jay Cutler got a contract extension at the same time that he and Chad Ochocinco were having a friendly Twitter conversation. As our friends at Tremendous Upside Potential point out, Jay Mariotti, of course, was not amused with Cutler’s willingness to take a few moments to himself away from the football field.

In Vikings news, there is a little bit of confusion regarding whether coach Brad Childress will be getting a contract extension soon or not.

In Buckeye news, despite a loss to Purdue, Jim Tressel is not planning a big changes.

Blogging, social media, and other stuff

Here are five reasons why Google’s new sidewiki feature will fail.

Mashable a few interesting posts:

• summary of a UCLA study that finds surfing the Internet stimulates your brain
• Twitter’s CEO says the world is big enough for Twitter AND Facebook
• Just how big a game-changer with the Motorola Droid be? Is it a serious challenger to the iPhone? One thing is for sure…from the pictures, it just may kill you, me, and everyone.

And a little something for the fellas

All Left Turns delivers a solid breakdown of the 25 hottest women in motorsports. Lewis Hamilton and Jimmie Johnson are fighting for pole position on this one.

Straight Pinkie delivers the good with a photo gallery of Eva Wyrwal.

Asylum.com brings you the 100 most search for hotties on the Internet.

Have a great Wednesday everyone. Remember to look for tomorrow’s WYNTR post a little earlier in the morning. The comment section is yours to discuss any and all topics.

Apparently Cal Ripken Jr. is now fair game for steroid speculation based on some comments made by Jose Canseco yesterday in the wake of the New York Times report regarding Big Papi and ManRam being on the 2003 list.  

Here are the comments made by Canseco that are causing a few of the biggest sports blogs out there to engage in the kind of “reckless steroid speculation” that might cause Ken Rosenthal to develop an aneurysm:

Canseco says MLB facing bigger issue — (Pedro Gomez at ESPN.com)

 “When you tell me something I didn’t already know, I’ll be surprised,” Canseco told ESPN. “And I’ll tell you this, Major League Baseball is going to have a big, big problem on their hands when they find out they have a Hall of Famer who’s used.”

“…What I speak out of my mouth is the truth. It burns like fire. Just remember, I have never lied about this subject.”

And directly below is one example of the leap in logic that Canseco’s comments have led some bloggers to take, plus a pretty telling screen grab of the poll at Sports By Brooks. Seriously, when the question of whether Cal Ripken — CAL FREAKING RIPKEN! — was or was not clean generates a 50/50 response, it’s pretty clear the MLB continues to have a major problem. 

Is Canseco Trying To Tell Us Cal Ripken Juiced? — (Sports By Brooks)

Baseball’s 2007 HOF induction featured the impeccable class of Tony Gwynnand baseball’s iron man, Cal Ripken, Jr.

Now if steroids were derived from Outback Bloomin’ Onions, then I’d be all over Gwynn in this instance. But based on the longtime Padre’s alarmingly wide waistline and lack of power, I think it’s safe to assume he wasn’t juicing.

Ripken though? *Uncomfortable squirm*

To be fair, Brooks goes on to say that he is not accusing Ripken of using and that he hopes such speculation is way off base. But, based on a prior experience of mine, I was under the impression that it was completely outside the realm of all reasonable standards to even put the thought out there, regardless of if other people are talking about it or not, or if certain circumstantial evidence could lead someone to wonder.

Of course, it wasn’t only Brooks jumping on the should-we-now-suspect-Ripken bandwagon.

Canseco Claims There’s a Dirty Hall of Famer, Scary If True — (Ty Duffy at The Big Lead)

Canseco said Henderson was not the Hall of Famer. If he is truthful and you move down the list, it gets scary.

Cal Ripken played on Orioles’ teams with Rafael Palmeiro and Brady Anderson. The two combined for 89 home runs in 1996, the year all seven Orioles’ hitters who played full seasons hit more than 20 HR.

Ty also provides evidence of a curious statistical jump made by Kirby Puckett back in the day.  The Puckett paragraph includes a link to a post at Bugs and Cranks that discusses the book The Bill James Gold Mine 2008.  Here as excerpt from that post:

And finally, item 12, which concludes the essay about Atypical Seasons: “Two of the greatest home run under-producers of all time were teammates: Kirby Puckett and Gary Gaetti in 1984. Puckett hit no home runs (-16), Gaetti hit only 5 (-19). Suggesting the possibility that the Twins’ two World Championships may have been aided by their team being among the first to discover…well, I’d better not go there. Nor will I point out that Gaetti was bald and had acne and Puckett died young.”

The writer at B&C goes on to chastise James for tossing out such speculation without proof. In fact, his comments regarding James’ statements are similar to posts that were critical of my Ibanez article in June. 

To wrap all of this up into a neat, tidy little bow, here are my points in posting this:

1. There is absolutely no way that I think Cal Ripken Jr. was on steroids. But is there some circumstantial evidence that makes it at least reasonable to discuss the possibility? Sure, and much of it has been cited on other posts like the ones linked above.

• He played Major League Baseball in the 1990s.
• HGH has often been cited as a tool for recovery and health more than for producing bulky muscles. No one obviously had better health or a more consistent ability to recover than Cal Ripken.
• He played on Baltimore teams that included a lot of guys already implicated and who have been proven to be users.

And I’m sure there are other thin lines of association that can be drawn, as there is for every baseball player. But from my own personal standpoint, I’d add Cal Ripken Jr. to the list of guys that I don’t think ever used. And despite being desensitized to the whole thing like everyone else because of the constant stream of new players being explicitly implicated, I’d still be pretty stunned if anything like that ever came out about Ripken. No way.

2. Things obviously have not, and are not, getting better in regards to steroids in baseball and the rampant speculation that accompanies every player. With each new name that is leaked, or each new statement from Jose Canseco, someone else gets mentioned as a potential user. Who would have ever thought that Cal Ripken Jr.’s name would start getting bandied about in the process?

3. The only way for things to get better is for past and even present users to man up and be honest. The fallout will not be as bad as they think, and it’s the only way to truly achieve any semblance of closure and protect the people who are actually innocent (whoever they are).

4. I’m even more convinced that all of the attention MSF got after the Ibanez post really was just a case of this site winning some strange sort of mainstream media lottery. Somehow we got held up as an icon of irresponsible steroid speculation, but really we are just one of many, many sites that expresses its honest thoughts, opinions, and feelings regarding steroids and baseball. And we will continue to do just that. You don’t have to read very far into our archives to see how genuinely I and the writers of this site love and appreciate the game of baseball. 

One quick note for clarity: I am in no way calling Brooks or Ty out for being wrong or off base in writing their post about Ripken. Neither one is making any kind of specific accusation and I think they are well within their right to have such a discussion even if it does name specific names, and even if that name isone as exalted as Cal Ripken Jr. But I have to admit I chuckled a little bit when I saw their posts. It was pretty easy for guys in the mainstream media to pick on little ‘ol Midwest Sports Fans back in June; we’ll see if anyone has the cojones to call out two of the bigger and more powerful blogs for doing pretty much the exact same thing I did.

Anyway, lots of activity around the web today, obviously, as baseball’s trading deadline came to a furious close.  I was going to link to stories about each trade, but I figured I could be much more efficient and just link you to MLB Trade Rumors, where they have the latest news and notes on everything trade-related in Major League Baseball.

Here are some other non-trade deadline links to carry you through the afternoon and weekend:

• Did Percy Harvin Keep It Real? — (Sparty and Friends)
• Marcus Harrison isn’t fat, he’s just big boned — (Blog Down, Chicago Bears)
• Bad news for Bears fans — (The Zoner)
• If you don’t like Jay Cutler, you’ve come to the wrong place — (Not Qualified to Comment)
• Stacy Keibler looks hot wearing a fedora, and a bikini too — (MoonDog)
• Don’t fear the Reaper, he’s probably caught in traffic – (Great Moments in Christory)
• NFL’s most overrated QBs — (Major League Jerk)
• 15 of the worst celeb songs of all-time — (Hail Mary Jane)
• The story behind some favorite cereals — (Gunaxin)
• 50 rock songs that defined the 90s — (Gunaxin)
• Keeley Hazell…UH YUMP! – (Straight Pinkie)
• 5 high school crushes, where are they now? — (Regretful Morning)

* – Cal Ripken Jr. photo credit: AstrosDaily.com

My visceral reaction while reading the article also confirms, at least to me, that every former PED user should do the exact same thing that Parque has done.

I am not going to fill this post with excerpts or try to over-summarize the article.  Parque wrote it himself and I believe it is important enough to warrant being consumed fully in his own words.  However, before I link you there and then move on with my reactions, I will pull out the following quote because it is the most compelling statement that Parque makes:

“As long as it is not hurting others” is the quandary I struggled with when I decided to take HGH. Who am I responsible to, the game or my family? Even though the game gave me a lot, my family means everything to me, and I must put them first. Were they going to starve if I stopped playing? No, but I did not want to sacrifice our lifestyle or put them in a situation in which ”the unknown” was dictating our future.

Did I hurt people? Did I disgrace baseball? Yes, but I was trying to preserve a financial future, keep my family’s lifestyle intact and keep a lifelong journey alive.

Follow the link to read Jim Parque’s HGH admission at the Chicago Sun-Times in its entirety.  The following article by Joe Cowley also provides a little bit of the backstory behind Parque’s decision to come forward about this HGH use.

And here is what I would like to say to Jim Parque: kudos to you man.

While I think Parque comes off as even more defensive and apologetic than he needs to be, his article is undeniably genuine and absolutely should be a lesson for the multitudes of other baseball players who faced similar situations and made similar decisions.

I have long been frustrated with the performance-enhancing drug problem in baseball, and have discussed these frustrations a lot here at MSF.  Clearly one of the reasons is that spectacular feats like the Summer of Big Mac and Sammy, and Barry Bonds’ records, among many others, now seem tainted and dirty.  But more profound than even the disgust at not knowing what numbers and feats to trust is the consistent disappointment of learning that the athletes I adored, and whose every move I followed, could turn out to be liars and cheats.

I am someone who is still in that somewhat awkward mid- to late-20s transition phase where you go from innocent, idealistic kid to the more realistic and perhaps even jaded perspective of a man.  Only over the last few years have I truly been able to let go of my old notions of baseball, and the sports world as a whole, as this idyllic place where everything is “pure” and the laws of human nature that govern the rest of life do not apply.  And this applies to much more than just performance-enhancing drug use to include the myriad examples of legal troubles and other character issues we see on an almost daily basis.

To use a book/movie reference, if the world was Middle Earth I always perceived the sports world to be The Shire.  I’d imagine that’s not uncommon for someone like me to have such a perception, someone who grows up the son of a college football coach living a fun and carefree life in which the players that you watch and idolize on Saturday are your baby-sitters, and pick you up from school sometimes when Mom or Dad can’t, and treat you like a king in the locker room, and on and on.Â

This leads me to the most prominent reason why baseball’s sordid recent history of lying, cheating drug use has disappointed me so much.  I was innocent enough, and foolish enough, to define my consistent and unyielding fandom with blind faith.  And now that this blind faith has been violated, repeatedly, it’s disappointing.  But I have not stopped loving baseball, or stopped trying to give the players the benefit of the doubt in every situation; yet, I feel completely taken advantage of because those same players whose livelihood I support by being a yearly, daily, hourly, passionate fan have not respected me enough to “man up” (to use Parque’s phrase) and just be honest.

And that is why I think Jim Parque’s admission of HGH use in today’s Sun-Times should serve as a lesson to every baseball player, past and present, who has succumbed to the pressure of fans, their family, and their own dreams and ambitions.

The truth is that baseball and the sports world never was this Shire-like place, immune from the realities of the real world. The sports world is, in many ways, very much a reflection of the real world. And although kids growing up idolize athletes and entertainers for reasons borne out of idealistic adoration, I think we can actually learn more from them and have a healthier “relationship” with them by acknowledging and embracing the fact that they wake up to many of the same realities and tough decisions that we all do.

Sadly, the vast majority of PED-using athletes haven’t given us much to learn from.  They have, quite to the contrary, given us much to be scornful of by not showing fans any respect as they try to cover up and hide the fact that they made the very human and understandable decision to seek out an edge in pursuit of their dreams and in pursuit of prosperity and security for their families.

I’ll never condone a player using steroids or HGH because I think it is wrong; does that mean that I don’t empathize or sympathize with the reality of the situation that led them to such a choice? Absolutely not. And certainly there are differences in magnitude. Jim Parque used HGH one time, immediately regretted it, then stopped and ultimately apologized. It is easy to define his PED usage as a mistake in judgment because it was short-lived. Thus, his burden for contrition in my eyes is less than that of a player who used PEDs consistently and never had the integrity and/or conscience to stop out of either regret or fear of the long-term impact of future health problems on his family.Â

But even a larger burden of contrition can be overcome with forthright admissions. Why don’t more players and even Major League Baseball itself realize this? I can completely understand and sympathize with the decision to use PEDs, but I will never understand that.

The truth is that while I think and hope that I’d never make a similar decision, I am not pretentious enough to guarantee it. If I was close to getting a scholarship to play basketball at Indiana, for instance, and someone told me that if I injected this substance and then worked my ass off that it would probably come true, I’d like to think I would have enough integrity to dismiss it offhand; but would I, in the heat of that moment with my lifelong dream hanging in the balance?

The most honestly certain statement I can make is that I hope I would, and I think I would. I can, however, say one thing with certainty: if I did, there is no way I would be able to look people in the face and say I didn’t, or just retreat from view so I didn’t have to address it. At some point, character and integrity and respect for my sport and my fans would beckon and I’d have to come clean.

So, once again, I say kudos to Jim Parque for doing just that.

Read Jim Parque’s article and you get a much clearer insight into the mindset that led some people to cheat. While some people cheated for Bonds-like reasons of wanting to be the best and because it was the only fuel strong enough to power their massive egos, other lower profile guys like Parque cheated just to hang onto the only spot in their life where they felt confident that they could succeed and provide for their family. Is such thinking a bit irrational? Perhaps a little. But that doesn’t mean it was not an honest feeling followed by an honest mistake.

What is preventing more players from taking Parque’s route and just admitting this? For drug addicts who are rich and famous, rising drug rehab prices should not be a concern for them, nor should they be so reluctant to tell the truth. I have to think that plenty of baseball fans are sitting here, like I am, disappointed but willing to understand and even forgive. Treat people with respect and humility — and that is what Parque has done for fans by writing this piece — and typically you get the same in return. If you choose to be disrespectful, arrogant, and concerned only with yourself, like the vast majority of past and present cheating players have been, don’t be surprised when you are treated with anger, vitriol, and then ultimately with scornful indifference.

Go ahead and blame fans all you want for speculating about and discussing steroids and HGH and who might be using, but it’s not a function of a flaw inherent in fans; it’s a function of the flaws of selfishness and disrespect inherent in so many athletes in so many sports who take their duty to build an honest relationship with fans for granted. And before anyone disagrees and asks why an athlete should be responsible for building an honest relationship with fans, and not just for focusing on performing at their highest level, ask an athlete if they’d play their sport for free.

Because without the fans, that would be the reality.

I have never begrudged an athlete from making as much money as they can, but I do get a little peeved when they forget where that money comes from. Jim Parque did not forget this. And I understand that many athletes have used PEDs in part because of their desire to perform for their fans and not disappoint them. Again, I understand. Just tell me. Be honest. Be open. Respect me enough to know that I will have the ability to empathize with the reality of the pressures athletes face and with the reality of being a human being in the world we all share.

Respect me like Jim Parque did.Â

Jim Parque now has my respect in return, in addition to my understanding and forgiveness. He made a genuine mistake and owned up to it. That’s all I, and most other fans I come into contact with, are asking. If you cheated us once, or even multiple times, don’t keep cheating us with more lies and sad, pathetic strategies of diversion. Man up.Â

Thank you Jim for being one of the few athletes to step up and set an example. I really hope that more players follow suit because it will be as meaningful as any testing program, if not moreseo, in helping us all move past one of the most disappointing and disrespectful eras in the history of sports.

**********

* – Jim Parque card image credit: Baseball Cube

* – Rafael Palmeiro photo credit: Deadspin

* – Jim Parque photo credit: Seattle Times

However, something caught my eye that has become a pretty noticable trend.

My stats show me the keyword searches that have driven search engine referrals to the site. I’ve noticed that every time Albert Pujols has a big game, searches involving his name and “steroids” spike. After another two-homer outburst by El Hombre yesterday, here are the search numbers so far today:

• “albert pujols steroids” – 53
• “pujols steroids” – 41
• “pujols steroid” – 6
• “is albert pujols on steroids” – 4

And to the right is a snapshot from my Google Analytics tracking since I wrote this post about Pujols on May 15th. These are all search terms and the number of individual visits that have come to Midwest Sports Fans as a result.

I guess some people are wondering about Albert Pujols and steroids, huh?

And keep in mind, at last check my post about Pujols was only #7 on the first page of Google results for “albert pujols steroids”…so the posts above mine are driving significantly more traffic from these types of searches than I am.

And lest you think that the aforementioned post was speculative regarding Pujols being on steroids, I assure you it was not. In fact, I went out of my way to state that Pujols is one of the few remaining guys left that I believe to be clean. There is always doubt — a fact that we’ve all been over ad nauseum in recent weeks — but Pujols gets more benefit of the doubt than anyone in my mind.

A quick excerpt from that post, which was written a few weeks before the now infamous Raul Ibanez post:

I’ve given up hope on most current and former baseball players and stopped giving the vast majority of them any benefit of the doubt. And I don’t blame myself for not being able to withstand the force of pessimism…I blame Major League Baseball and the greed and vanity of the players.

However, one of the few guys that I remain steadfast in defending is Albert Pujols.

…

In fact, I’m done referring to PED’s as performance-enhancing drugs. From now, I’m calling them Pujols Emulation Drugs. Albert Pujols is the standard by which all other major league baseball players should be held, both on and off the field. Anyone caught using PEDs, like Manny for instance, is clearly just trying to reach Pujols’ level. But that’s the greatness of Albert Pujols: he didn’t need to use PEDs to get where he is (good Lord I hope…I really do).

I could go into all of the SEO reasons why this post ended up on the first page for an “albert pujols steroids” search, but I don’t want to bore you. Mainly it’s because those terms are in the <title> tag and the content matches up. It wasn’t necessarily my intention (not that I’m complaining, mind you) but I am glad that people searching for this information are finding that post.

Just as in the case of the Ibanez post, my discussion about Pujols was completely speculative, completely honest in terms of my thoughts and feelings, and highlighted a continuing problem in Major League Baseball that still requires addressing. The tone of the Pujols piece was more explicit in giving him the benefit of the doubt than the Ibanez article (something I’ve previously recognized as wishing I could do over) but I don’t really see a huge gulf of difference between them.

At the end of the day, Albert Pujols and Raul Ibanez sit atop my list of players that I believe in more than others. Everyone is playing with a cloud of suspicion right now, testing policy or not, and that’s just the reality. And while stories like ARod and Manny continue to frustrate me and many other baseball fans (though many have professed to just not caring anymore, which is fair…I’m just not there yet), I still try to focus more of my attention and appreciation on the guys who I think have always played the game the right way.

With that said, a list was recently published at the site RotoInfo that is supposedly the complete list of the 103 players who failed drug tests prior to the 2003 season. It is accompanied by the statement “Rumored steroid list (UNCONFIRMED)” and no other information is given but names. I find it absolutely amazing that my piece about Raul Ibanez — which accused no one — caused such a huge stir, while this list — which accuses 103 players specifically — has gone relatively under the radar in comparison. Again, I’m not complaining about the exposure generated by the Ibanez post, and I never have. The whole thing just still seems so random to me.

For the record, I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other about the RotoInfo list. I’ve seen other lists that have attempted to guess the identities of the 103 players and I simply lump this in with those. It’s just a speculative list — which I’m fine with — and there is no reason to consider it something more or less than any other list until we have some sort of confirmation. Tommy Craggs over at Deadspin wrote about the list yesterday and offers a more informed opinion about its potential validity than I can provide, as I am not all that familiar with the past work of RotoInfo.

However, after seeing the RotoInfo list and other lists like it, I figured I would try to flip the steroid speculation on its head and focus on the guys I think are clean, rather than waste time worrying about the guys I think may have cheated over the years. I will state again that I firmly believe every player is legitimately under suspicion; not necessarily that they are currently using, as I think testing has to have had a positive impact, but that they might have used in the past during the height of the PED era. With that said, there are guys that I believe in a lot more than others. So even though I’ve somewhat become an icon for negative steroid speculation (fair or not), allow me to tread for a few moments in the much less volatile and Rosenthalless ground of positive steroid speculation.

Here is my own personal speculative list of guys currently playing that I think have always been clean and still are (but that, granted, I still wouldn’t be totally shocked to learn dabbled in PEDs at some point during their careers).

Note: This list is not meant to be exhaustive. It only takes into account players who have played at a consistently above average level for a number of years and that I feel I could make a legitimate statistical and empirical case for in defending. Feel free to argue or add to the list in the comments:

• Albert Pujols
• Raul Ibanez (as said in the post linked above, after looking at even more statistical evidence that I’d originally neglected, I believe in his numbers much more than when I initially wrote the post.)
• Mark Buehrle
• Derek Jeter
• Roy Halladay
• Justin Morneau
• David Wright
• Grady Sizmore
• Mariano Rivera
• Joe Nathan
• Johan Santana
• Ichiro Suzuki
• Jim Thome
• C.C. Sabathia
• Ken Griffey Jr.

If you want to know how I arrived at this list, here you go: I clicked on each of the rosters in my fantasy league and went down the list, just going with my gut reaction. I tried to stick with more veteran guys who were around during the early parts of this decade. There were plenty of guys that “almost made it” (although I won’t name them so I don’t get accused of implicitly accusing them) but the guys above are the ones that I didn’t hesitate to add.

I suppose there are two ways to look at this list. I was actually surprised to find that many guys that I feel relatively comfortable with, but it still looks pretty paltry in comparison to the total number of MLB players. The list is only about half a roster’s worth of players. Congratulations once again Major League Baseball. The rotten fruits of your greed never cease to find new and exciting ways to manifest themselves.

Bringing things full circle, Albert Pujols does, in my mind, stand out as the “last great hope” of baseball fans who want to see records held by guys we believe in. I still consider Roger Maris to be the single-season home run king and I still consider Hank Aaron (my favorite player as a kid, even though he was retired) to be all-time home run king. Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, etc., etc.; these guys are not worthy of such lofty status. If Albert Pujols ever achieves one or both of those marks, I believe he will be worthy.

(Good Lord I hope…I really do.)

* – Albert Pujols photo credit: AlbertPujolsFanClub.com

From a recent article by Jerry Crowe of the Los Angeles Times:

Thanks to Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, etc., fans outside St. Louis must wonder, ‘Do we celebrate Albert Pujols or suspect him?’ . . .

Pujols has batted four times with the bases loaded this season and three times has hit grand slams. . . .

In his only other at-bat with the bases loaded, the St. Louis Cardinals slugger delivered only a two-run single. . . .

Sadly, it makes you wonder. . . .

Now, being from the Midwest and never having lived in LA, I was unfamiliar with Jerry Crowe’s work before seeing this article. However, I have to assume that he has proper journalistic training and some level of understanding for the “professional ethics” and “standards of decency” that were trotted out time and again over the past couple of weeks since I wrote about Raul Ibanez.

Geoff Baker and Ken Rosenthal know what I’m talking about.

I honestly don’t even know what to say. It’s not like this article by Crowe is an isolated example of some mainstream sportswriter going rogue and speculating about specific players using steroids. As was chronicled in the myriad posts written about the Raul Ibanez “controversy”, there are countless examples of media members making claims very similar to what Crowe has written above and similar to the article I wrote that touched off such a fire storm.

And I am not highlighting Crowe’s article because I disagree with him or think he is wrong to speculate. Albert Pujols is in my own personal group of players (along with Raul Ibanez, Derek Jeter, and a few others) that I believe in the most, but no one would truly surprise me anymore. I don’t think that Albert Pujols is on steroids, and his statistical consistency as well as what I’ve read about his high level character are two reasons why; yet, I certainly can understand why people would speculate, and the thought has definitely crossed my mind that it’s a reasonable possibility.

So I have no problem with what Crowe wrote. That’s not the point.

What I just find to be hilariously ironic, especially after another viewing of the Outside the Lines video a couple of nights ago, is how righteous and arrogant Ken Rosenthal was and how many of his peers came across the same way in their responses to what I wrote. Believe me, I’m glad they did because it helped to drive traffic to our site and give us a brief little brush with “fame” and exposure, but their larger points about how the blogosphere is ruining sports writing just seem more and more laughable with each post I read like Crowe’s above.

For some reason, bloggers took a tremendous amount of external criticism in the aftermath of Raul Ibanez’s comments about my post. And, come to think of it, I wonder if Albert Pujols is going to publicly scream at Jerry Crowe for his “pathetic” speculation. Perhaps not, since I assume Crowe wrote it from the LA Times offices and not from the dark nether regions of his mother’s basement.

But the truth of it all is this:

1. Bloggers didn’t create the steroid problem in baseball, baseball did. So getting angry at me or anyone else who writes about it honestly and genuinely is terribly misguided. That’s like having a water pipe burst or break at your house because the plumbers did a shoddy installation job and getting mad at the cable guy for talking about how wet your floor is.
2. Bloggers certainly didn’t create steroid speculation on our own. Journalists have done it for years (it just came far too late, I’m afraid). As I said above, I don’t have a problem with it. I just have a problem with people accusing the honest, hard-working, passionate sports fans who blog of being “unprofessional” and “unethical” and “attention whores” and “lacking standards of decency” and the multitudes of other trite criticisms we hear, when the “journalistic standards” (whatever that term even means) to which we are ostensibly being held (although most of us never claimed to be setting out to uphold them) are not even being upheld by their own peers.

There are fair criticisms and critiques from professional writers that we should listen to because they can make our content better, but I just hope that if Ken Rosenthal or Geoff Baker reads Jerry Crowe’s column that they roll their eyes, think it’s ridiculous, and write 5,000 word articles lambasting Crowe for his lack of integrity. (And I wonder if Crowe reached out to Pujols before “hitting publish.” He has “access.” Sadly, it makes you wonder…)

It just makes the last couple of weeks look like a disingenuous charade from a group of people who feel threatened by bloggers and the uncertain future of their industry. And it makes all of the righteous indignation seem like nothing more than a bunch of verbose and ironic nonsense.

Tom Fornelli, the author of FoulBalls.net and a writer for FanHouse, said it best as you can read in the excerpt below. And since his article is the one that alerted me to this story, and is the reason I am writing about it, I will both mention him by name and link to his article. (You see, journalists, in the blogosphere we have our own code of ethics and integrity and *gasp* actually follow it!).

It does make me wonder. It makes me wonder what exactly the difference is between what Jerod Morris did on a blog and Jerry Crowe did in the Los Angeles Times. Frankly the only difference I see — aside from the fact Morris did actual statistical analysis and Crowe just threw his opinion out there — is that Crowe speculated about a specific player’s steroid use in a major newspaper that I’m sure has a far greater reach than MidwestSportsFans.com, yet for some reason I doubt there will be as much of a reaction to it.

I guess responsibility only applies to those without press passes.

I have nothing else to say about this story.

By the way, for a funny little anecdote about Sammy Sosa and his obsession with the Sammy Sosa Gun Show, here is another great post by Fornelli at FanHouse. Has a player ever fallen from beloved and respected to resented and laughed at more precipitously than Sammy Sosa? It would be sad if every problem Sosa has faced was not brought on by his own selfishness, personal choices, and the ineptitude of the union and league that he was a part of.

And if you still want more MLB content to read, the good folks over at Sparty and Friends put together a nice piece regarding MLB contraction.

**********

My apologies again for the lack of activity this week. Work has been extremely busy and my two best friends from college are in town so my time at night to write has been limited, but it sure has been great catching up. We ate dinner at Fogo de Chao last night. Ridiculously expensive and ridiculously worth it. See if they have one in your city and go right now. It’s amazing.

And on the very bright side, my previously ill dog is almost fully recovered from surgery and will be completely back bouncing around like his old self in about a week. Thanks again to everyone who sent emails and tweets with kind and supportive words. They were all very much appreciated.

Have a great day everyone.

The NEW YORK TIMES IS REPORTING that Sammy Sosa tested positive for steroids in 2003. Here is your excerpt, none of which was written or speculated about by me, but rather comes directly from a New York Times report that is putting this information forward as confirmed fact:

Sammy Sosa, who joined with Mark McGwire in 1998 in a celebrated pursuit of baseball’s single-season home run record, is among the players who tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003, according to lawyers with knowledge of the drug-testing results from that year.

The disclosure that Sosa tested positive makes him the latest baseball star of the last two decades to be linked to performance-enhancers, a group that now includes McGwire, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez and Rafael Palmeiro.

…

The 2003 positive test could also create legal troubles for Sosa because he testified under oath before Congress at a public hearing in 2005 that he had “never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs.”

If you would like a blogger’s reaction, hop on over to our good friend Josh Q. Public to see what he had to say about the report that Sammy Sosa testing positive for steroids. We’re laying off steroid talk around here for a while.

Needless to say, this is another sad, sad day for baseball fans everywhere. One more hero for whom speculation proved true and whose accomplishments will forever be tainted. Way to go players, the union, and Major League Baseball.

The fact that no one is surprised by this is YOUR fault and nobody else’s.

Update: One more thought. I know there are going to be a lot of I-told-you-so’s and jokes going around and all of that stuff, especially in light of everything that happened last week with the Raul Ibanez story. And I know that I’ve always been a Sosa and Cubs hater. But let me make one thing one clear:

I HATE this story. Hate it.

Yes, I suspected all along that Sosa was on steroids, and in fact I would have bet money that he was had I been forced to. (This, remember, is the complete of opposite of what I’ve maintained about Ibanez, who I believe is clean.) And even though the video below called Sosa out two years ago, way before any proof had been gleaned, I take zero satisfaction in a story like this.

It sucks, and it sucks bad.

The Summer of Big Mac and Sammy was such a great experience, such a great memory; and I can only imagine how special it much have been for Cardinals and Cubs fans. And perhaps everyone had already given up the purity of that memory before today, but even in that case this story is still a big, fat kick in the junk with a steel-toed boot for any baseball fan.

I know that we’re all cynical in this day and age, but in our hearts we all still have that innocent, pure baseball fan inside of us who watches the game with child-like wonder — the one who first fell in love with the game way back when.

This story is yet another insult to that part of me. And I’m fucking sick and tired of it.

**********

“Enjoy” the video, which sadly seems to become more relevant with each passing year, month, and day:

(And once again, for the record, this song is NOT purporting that Derek Jeter ever used PEDs. Listen to the words! “But not Yankees #2!” Not sure how many times I have to explain this to people…)

Blogs have taken off, and now we’ve got a problem. The lines have blurred.

What happens when bloggers get together and create a site like Midwest Sports Fans, updating it with news, and making it look and feel like a news site? Are they now journalists with the same standards?

With mainstream media being consumed on the web more and more each day, it’s tougher to discern what’s journalism and what’s “just some guy writing.”

If you go on a newspapers’ website to get the news, it looks like a website, has a banner on top, and some columns and news items. If you go to a blog site, like Midwest Sports Fans, it may look pretty darn similar, with the basic web design, sponsor links, and columns. The difference is that the columns on this site don’t have the same journalistic standards.

This has become a pretty slippery slope.

As sites like Midwest Sports Fans explode in popularity, they become more legitimate-looking. Therefore, such sites’ readers treat then more as “news” as opposed to “wanderings of the mind.” Does this mean higher ethics and journalistic standards need to be exercised?

In the case of Raul Ibanez I think it does.

When you have Raul Ibanez reacting to it, and Jerod Morris (JRod) appearing on ESPN, you know your site has arrived. There is a responsibility to balance your right to blog with journalistic principles of fairness.

Here’s an analogy: If you tell a group of four friends that you suspect Mr. Smith is gay (and why), you’d feel okay, because you’re just telling a few people. But would you stand in a crowded opera house of 1,000 people and announce that with a megaphone? Probably not. You’d have to feel a little funny about that.

That’s the difference between writing something in a chat room or e-mail, versus placing it on a huge blog site like MWSF.

When talking about journalistic standards, the lines are blurry of course. Newspaper writers who blog for their own papers’ websites have let their standards slip. A decade ago, you would never print rumors or hunches unless you could confirm them. Nowadays, for some reason, the same legitimate journalists will post just about everything, thinking its okay because it’s “just on their blog.”

They put something on the web and then say…“but I haven’t been able to confirm it.” Then can you really say it at all?

However, I still know they would not go as far as to drag a stand-up guy like Ibanez into the steroid discussion, out of the blue. I’m a journalist, and I wouldn’t have. Mainstream media members have their reputations and relationships to maintain.

The subject of who has to stick to journalistic ethics and standards boils down to how you present yourself. If Jerod wondered about Ibanez’s possible steroid use in a chat room, it wouldn’t matter. But since MWSF has a huge following, Jerod (JRod) has turned himself into a quasi-journalist and needs to be careful. He told me on Friday that he doesn’t regret writing about his Ibanez-steroid theory (and naming him), he only regrets he wasn’t more careful with the tone and the title of the story. In other words, bloggers should have the right to say what’s on their mind, but he does sense that there is a level of responsibility that comes with it.

Remember bloggers, you’re not just talking to your friends anymore. You’re sharing this stuff with 50,000 people or more, larger than some newspapers’ entire circulation.

Jerod wrote a piece, basically saying it’s sad that in this day and age we have to suspect aging sluggers of steroid use. He speculated that Ibanez could very well be using.

If a member of the mainstream media wrote that piece, the author would not be ethically able to name Ibanez as an example, unless he was getting Ibanez’s reaction on the topic of “the blanket of suspicion.” There was an SI article on the same topic, using Albert Pujols as the focus. The reason that article was okay was that Pujols was discussing how sad it is that there are doubts. Plus the article wasn’t done in a way to ignite speculation.

JRod said he would have asked Ibanez about the topic, but bloggers don’t have the same access to the players as regular media. I believe that makes it not okay to name names.

When JRod was on Outside the Lines (picture courtesy of Awful Announcing), Ken Rosenthal blasted him for not showing any decency and writing whatever he wanted. John Gonzalez of the Philly Inquirer took more of a middle ground, saying bloggers are the “wild west of journalism,” and they have to be careful. I agree with John to a point. People can blog about whatever, but when blog sites start to look like news organizations, there have to be some standards.

JRod did not come out and say Ibanez is using…he just said there is reason to doubt him in this day and age. That doesn’t sound terrible, but because JRod’s following is so huge, it certainly created a huge backlash, including from Ibanez himself.

MWSF has the burden of popularity. It has become legitimate. It has become a place people come to for insight and information. It is very easy for someone who is reading online material to forget they are on a blog site as opposed to mainstream media website.

At the end of the day, it’s up to each blogger to realize they have a level of responsibility to fact-check and not spread rumor. JRod found out the hard way that your tone and the way you present facts can do a lot of damage. While he says he doesn’t regret naming Ibanez, he says it has made him think about being careful. I also credit Jrod for reaching out to Ibanez after the story broke in Philadelphia and trying to explain himself.

That’s the type of responsibility, accountability, and decency that needs to be on everyone’s mind next time they blog.

———-

Scott Reister is a featured contributor to Midwest Sports Fans, as well as Dallas Sports Fans.

He is a Sports Anchor for the NBC affiliate in the Tri-Cities and Spokane, WA. To learn more about Scott, visit the Scott Reister bio page on Midwest Sports Fans or check out the Local Sports page on KNDU.com.

To contact Scott: sreister@hotmail.com

And generally I agree, and I believe my public comments since Wednesday show this.

In my initial reaction to hearing Raul Ibanez’s comments, I did offer up a small but sincere apology for the simple fact that the Ibanez-steroids speculation had advanced to the degree it had. And while I believe that I was justified in what I wrote in the original post at the center of the firestorm, and that the true catalyst for this story blowing up was the mischaracterization of it by the Inquirer piece and other mainstream media observers, there are two important facts that I feel need to be understood and that have made me feel more “apologetic” — for the outcome as it relates specifically to Raul Ibanez, not the actual story, its content and speculation, or its intent — than many have advised me that I should be:

1. I personally do not think Raul Ibanez is on steroids, only that such speculation is warranted for every player in Major League Baseball.
2. I personally do not want to see Raul Ibanez ever test positive or be explicity implicated (which, remember, I did not do) in steroids. Under no circumstances will that make me feel one iota of vindication or satisfaction. None. The realist/pessimist in me cannot overlook that last 15 years of Major League Baseball and exonerate anyone in my own mind; however, the optimist in me sees Raul Ibanez as possessing as much potential as any current player to be a catalyst for restoring fans’ trust. And that is what I want to see happen, and that was actually at the foundation of the original hypothesis for my post, which you may recall was that Ibanez is not on steroids.

With that said, like most writers I know do with pieces they write, I look back on the original Raul Ibanez piece and see plenty of opportunities for it to be a stronger piece of writing. In the interest of full disclosure, honesty, and accountability, here they are:

1. Understanding now how many people skimmed or did not even read the article, I would more clearly and emphatically state what I said above in #1: that I personally do not think Raul Ibanez is on steroids, only that such speculation is warranted for every player in Major League Baseball.

I actually think I am pretty clear on this point, but I do somewhat believe that specifically with respect to how I constructed the article I could have been more clear about this fact for those who only read the title or gave the article a passing glance before passing judgment. This does not in any way mean, however, that I think the article in its current form is inappropriate. The truth is, I could look at any post I’ve made on Midwest Sports Fans, with or without external critiques, and find a way that I think makes it better. In that sense, the Ibanez post is like any other post you’d find scrolling through the archives.

2. In reference to the point above, I do not believe the title is 100% relfective of my own personal feelings on the Ibanez debate. It is in some ways more suggestive and speculative than the article itself when the full article is considered in totality. I could have been more respectful of the fact that titles often frame the mindset with which readers view the contents of an article. This could have helped to stem the tide of mischaracterization that I believe occurred with the article, especially for those who didn’t read it or only skimmed it. Again, I fully stand by the title as is, as I do with the article. But might I change it hindsight knowing what I know? I’d certainly consider it, but definitely wouldn’t feel obligated to do so in any way.

3. Rob Neyer, among others, pointed out one specific phrase I used in the article that I’d like to have back, mainly because it simply does not make sense within the context of the article. This point really has nothing to do with Raul Ibanez. It’s just a spot where I think I was lazy in making sure I was putting forth my best effort as a writer. In fact, every time I read it I hear nails-on-chalkboard in my head. Here is Neyer’s comment, from his Sweet Spot blog on ESPN.com, which I agree with 100%, and said so in his comment thread:

That’s not a particularly good piece of writing, because when you say you’re going to leave the speculation unstated and then spend three paragraphs essentially stating the speculation, you’ve written yourself into an uncomfortable corner. Aside from that single clause, though, has Morris — who’s 27, by the way — written anything here that’s unreasonable? Players cheated. Players have lied about cheating. The players fought for years against any efforts to limit or eliminate the cheating.

I’m sorry, players, but you just don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.

I left that last part in there because it speaks to my higher point. The article, in some ways that I recognize and acknowledge, is not a particularly good piece of writing, and certainly not what I would consider my best work. (In fact, to be honest, strictly as a piece of writing I think it pales in comparison to the post I wrote today about Frank Thomas and the Chicago White Sox, which will unfortunately get 20,000+ less views and 300+ less comments.)

4. The last area that I would love to have a mulligan on is that I wish I had given myself longer than my usual window of 7:00 am – 9:00 am to research, develop, and write the post. Once 9:00 hits I typically move on to my non-sports blogging work out of necessity, but I do enjoy the daily morning challenge of finding a topic to write about so the content stays fresh on MSF. In this case, had I expected the article to be viewed by more people than the buddy in my fantasy league I referenced and 300-400 other people, I would have gone into far more depth researching it. That I can very honestly say.

So those of you who have criticized the article for not going as far as it could have gone in examining statistical reasons to explain Raul Ibanez’s start to this season, I acknowledge your critique. However, I will say in my own defense that many, many other articles have been written that speculated about individual steroid use without the following attributes that my article contained:

• An initial hypothesis of disproving steroid speculation about an individual.
• Objective statistical analysis of more than just topline numbers. I didn’t just cite Ibanez’s HR rate and SLG% and conclude that it was reasonable to suspect PEDs could possibly be an influence because Ibanez is an MLB player and all MLB players, regardless of if their numbers are up or down, are up for speculation. I tried to give specific analysis of the park factor idea that many have alluded to but that not many have specifically outlined with numbers. The truth is, I think the majority of the people who read through the entire article noticed this and have recognized this.

All that said, in the time since I wrote the article I have found a plethora of sources who have taken what I started (and some who had done it before I wrote my piece) and looked deeper into the possible statistical explanations for Ibanez’s numbers. In the interest of complete fairness to Ibanez, here are some of the most illustrative and objective analyses I’ve found, a few of which I mentioned in a previous post:

This first post, from We’re The Team to Beat, was written before my post was even a consideration in my own mind. Notice in the excerpt how the author acknowledges an ongoing debate regarding Ibanez and steroids (as does this post from the blog It’s All About the Money, Stupid, which was also published before I’d even considered tackling the topic for those of you who think I started this debate):

In one of the topics I’d be chatting in, people discussed Raul Ibanez so I mentioned the piece I wrote yesterday about steroids and good guys like Raul. Of course there are few who believe that Raul honestly did steroids so they kicked around a few other ideas. The most intriguing one I saw mentioned is the split in Raul’s stats between hitting with runners on and no one on base (credit to joboggi).

The author goes on to cite some very compelling numbers showing that Ibanez is historically a much better hitter with men on base, a situation he finds himself in more often with Philly’s potent lineup surrounding him. Thus, an increase in his overall numbers, specifically his AVG/OBP/SLG line and RBI toal, should have been expected this season.

For more proof of just how much better a lineup Ibanez now hits in, consider today’s post from Tom Verducci entitled “Mariners’ offense historically bad…“. Here is the most telling excerpt:

Indeed, the Mariners are a fascinatingly bad offensive team, especially for a team that is playing .500 ball. It’s hard to construct a team in this era, in a league with the DH, that has this much trouble scoring runs. They are last in the majors in runs; yes, worse than the Giants and Padres.

Surely, with a player of Ibanez’s caliber still in the lineup, the Mariners would be better. But these two analyses are very telling of just how impressive Ibanez’s 3-year averages in Seattle were, and how much more protection and run-producing opportunities he has now that he is in Philly.

Update: I forgot about something while initially writing this post. Raul Ibanez has gone from the AL to the NL and that alone provides valid reason to expect his numbers to jump. A commenter on the original post pointed out what should have been obvious to me but wasn’t. I was able to find some numbers to back it up, including the ones below (from this NBCSports.com article) that show the disparity in stats between the leagues during Interleague Play:

Interleague comparison:

Statistic	AL	NL
BA	.275	.251
Runs	1,249	1,014
ERA	3.69	4.55

As a White Sox fan and a guy who always roots for the AL in the All-Star Game, these stats are both expected and exciting. The AL rules.

Another point I’ve cited before, though not in the original article, was made by Dan Levy on his On The DL Podcast. Levy mentions that many players have been implicated or suspected of steroid use because of huge statistical jumps during contract years. Ibanez signed a 3-year, $30 million contract with Philadelphia before this season started, so one line of thinking suggests that he should be less motivated to use PEDs.

Of course, there is a flip side to this line of thinking, and relates to Alex Rodriguez. ARod has said that part of his motivation to use steroids was to live up to the massive contract given to him by the Texas Rangers.

Thus, we have legitimate evidence on both sides of this argument, essentially making it a moot point.

But here is another analysis that is anything but moot.

Joe Posnanski, in an article that I have lauded several times since Wednesday, provides multiple examples of 50- to 55-game streches over Ibanez’s career during which Raul Ibanez has had stretches comparable to how he has started this season. The examples span Ibanez’s full career during his stops in Kansas City, Seattle, and now Philadelphia.

And as I acknowledged in my original article, such stretches are magnified when they begin a season:

Personally, I am withholding judgment until we see a full seasons’ worth of stats. Many players put together terrific runs of 150-250 ABs in the midst of otherwise normal or just slightly above average (based on their career numbers) seasons. Ibanez’s terrific 219 AB run since Opening Day is just magnified right now because it came at the start of the season.

Joe P.’s article simply lends more empirical credence to the idea that Ibanez has proven to be one of those players capable of incredible runs over short sample sizes, and that this should be considered when speculating about the reasons for his hot start.

I also found yet another great statistical explanation for Raul Ibanez putting up much better numbers with the Phillies than he did with the Mariners. The analysis, by Zach Fein of FeinSports.com, includes a discussion of the park factor idea in a manner that is actually more mathematically intricate and in-depth that my own more surface-based analysis of the numbers.

Here is an excerpt of Zach’s discussion of the expected influence of Ibanez changing home parks:

If we adjust his 2006-08 stats from Seattle accordingly, his previously good batting line is now great: .308/.376/.541, with 31 home runs and 116 RBI per year.

His current OBP of .380 is in line with his adjusted OBP, but the slugging percentage is where the major differences lies—an actual .671 versus the adjusted .539.

Why is the disparity so large? Ibanez has hit 20 home runs in just 80 fly balls, a HR/FB ratio of 25 percent. The league average falls around 10 or 11 percent; Ibanez’s was 10.7 and 10.9 percent each of the past two years, respectively.

From 2006 to 2008, Ibanez’s HR/FB percentage was 12.7 percent. Our estimate for his HR/FB percentage this year is about 14.6, which includes a 20 percent increase and a slight regression to the mean (15 percent, to be exact).

Which means that we would expect 11 or 12 home runs in 80 fly balls for Ibanez. (By the way, if we prorate 12 home runs in his 255 plate appearances to average of 681 in his last three years in Seattle, we’d get an average of 32 homers per year. We previously estimated 31 home runs in Philadelphia for Ibanez.)

If we then take away eight of his 20 homers—and add four doubles, assuming half of those eight are outs and half are doubles—his slugging percentage falls to .566 and his OPS to .946. And if those eight non-homers turned out to be all outs, his actual performance this year would actually be worse than what his adjusted stats estimated.

(By the way, my apologies to Zach for including such a large excerpt but I do feel a sense of responsibility to fully present relevant statistical analysis that could help explain Ibanez’s start. I definitely encourage everyone to hop over to Fein Sports and read the article in its entirety…a practice that I am now much more appreciative of than before for reasons that should be obvious.)

After the excerpt above, Zach goes into a detailed explanation of how Ibanez’s current 2009 numbers could also be influenced by random fluctuation, concluding with this definitive statement:

The stats show that aside from his insanely high HR/FB rate (20 home runs in 80 fly balls), Ibanez’s current stats are not too far off from his true talent level. Both his on-base percentage and home run percentage are within one fluctuation of his projection, something we’d see 68 percent of the time, and his batting average is within 1.3 SDs of his projection.

Steroids? Nope.

I know that I have also come across other statistical analyses, but I regret that I did not save the links. Please feel free to post them in the comment section should you know of other good statistical breakdowns of Ibanez’s numbers in 2009. The ones above were the ones that struck me as the most illustrative and persuasive, which is why I have included them here.

So what does this all mean?

Well, looking at Zach Fine’s conclusion, he was able to definitively state what I had hoped to state when I initially set out to write my article: that steroids need not be speculated about as an explanation for Raul Ibanez’s fast start because there is such overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And while I have always maintained that I think Ibanez is clean, and that there are reasonable explanations for his fast start, I will happily admit that I am even more strongly in possession of this thought and belief now.

The great posts referenced above are in many ways more detailed and expository than even my own original post, and I’ve always been open-minded to any analysis or argument that perfectly natural factors are influencing Raul Ibanez’s start.

Still, I guess you could say that I just don’t have the same overall level of trust in Major League Baseball that Zach Fine appears to have. Perhaps his trust extends only to Raul Ibanez and only because he examined it in such a methodical way. Either way, I envy Zach because he accomplished what I wanted to accomplish but ended up failing to do: find enough objective statistics and explanations to overcome my pervasive distrust of Major League Baseball and all of its players, who — in my own mind, and in the mind of others — have been colored with varying shades of reasonable suspicion and speculation.

What I came to realize while writing my original article about Raul Ibanez, and in studying the statistical analyses I’ve found since, is that there is no level of objective analysis that will lead me to completely trust a Major League Baseball player save for a line of urine cups sealed and certified with dates and some synonym for the word “clean” on them. It has nothing to do with Raul Ibanez specifically, and in fact he is one of the guys I believe in the most, even moreso thanks to intelligent analyses that Zach Fine’s.

I continue to withold judgment one way or the other on all players, including Ibanez, until definitive proof is presented of steroid use. Honestly, I hope that by adding the statistical evidence above to what I already presented Monday that many other baseball fans can be persuaded to believe in Raul Ibanez specifically.

I will always be honest and provide my opinion on the topics I cover here at Midwest Sports Fans, because that’s what I believe the duty of a blogger is, but just because I’m skeptical doesn’t mean that I want others to share my skepticism.

Because the skepticism sucks, to be honest with you.

The summer of Big Mac and Sammy was awesome when it happened because we all believed that what we were seeing was legitimate. Only in hindsight do we now look back on it with shameful eyes (even though, remember, that Sammy Sosa has never been explicitly linked to steroids…except by Rick Reilly, of course), and I’d give anything as a baseball fan to return to the innoncence I had then. Contrast your visceral feelings during that summer with your feelings when Barry Bonds hit 73 or when Bonds was chasing Hank. We all know how much of a difference there was with that experience, and in many ways it ruined it for so many of us who live and breathe baseball during the summer.

And, by the way, for those of you who think I am opportunistically jumping on this steroids issue now and making a big deal about it because of the exposure I’ve recently received from the Ibanez story, watch the video below. I wrote the lyrics to this song while hungover one day when I was visiting KVB in Miami. KVB, for the record, is the one who who gets all the credit for masterfully finding the pictures and editing them together. This was somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4 years ago during January…though I can’t remember the exact date.

What I am trying to show is that steroids in baseball (and football too) had already eroded my trust by that point and pissed me off to the point that it was the first subject I wanted to tackle when we created Flash Sports Tonight. This is a subject about which I am passionate and that I take very seriously, so you’ll have to forgive me if I get a bit defensive when people attack my motives as being anything less than genuine.

Anyway, here is the video, which still sums up by anger and disillusionsment with Major League Baseball.

(And for the record, because we have had a problem this week with people making snap judgments without reading or listening to what is actually said, the video is NOT purporting that Derek Jeter was a steroid user. Listen to the lyrics: “…but not Yankees #2…”. And Kenny Rogers’ appearance has nothing to do with steroids, but rather with how the pine tar incident from the World Series was yet another example of a player cheating his peers to get ahead. I hope think that should be all the clarifications that are necessary.)

So, sadly, thanks to the many cheating liars who have shamed the game of baseball, I continue to fight the whispers of doubt in my own head that persist even for the guys I believe in the most, like Raul Ibanez and Derek Jeter — both of whom would be among the players whose implication in any type of PED use would shock me the most.

To conclude this post, I will excerpt from my own post from last night (in which I discussed how much I want to regain trust in Major League Baseball again), because it sums up my prevailing thoughts on what I hope to see happen moving forward:

…And though that evil little whisper of skepticism mercilessly refuses to purge itself from my ear, I’m still going to fight to be optimistic. And I’m still going to root for Raul Ibanez, as I have been all along, to someday prove to be one of the explicit justifications for that optimism and a foundational test case upon which that optimism can endure.

And to those of you who made it all the way here to the end, you have my utmost and most sincere appreciation.

Have a great weekend everybody.

(Quick aside: We know one thing about the White Sox: while everyone now knows that I believe all baseball players are up for steroids suspicion, I doubt anyone is sniffing around for syringes in the White Sox clubhouse. With an offense like ours, no one will be discussing steroids and the White Sox any time soon.)

After reflecting more about the interview on Outside the Lines yesterday, just a few more thoughts:

Ken Rosenthal asked at one point, “how did we get here?” What I wish I had said was: “We got here because one newspaper mischaracterized what I said, because a reporter from that same paper went running to Raul Ibanez for a comment without (ostensibly) Ibanez or the reporter reading the actual article I wrote, and because the mainstream media and its holier-than-thou high standards decided to run with the story. If none of that had happened, the Raul Ibanez story would be making its way towards 300-400 views right now and fading from relevance even here at MSF, as opposed to being a national story.

I wasn’t setting out to create a firestorm, but it is curious (there’s that word again) that the MSM was so quick to jump on the story. Could it be because the MSM salivates anytime the terms “steroids” or “PEDs” and an actual player’s name are in the same sentence? Might such stories drive pretty high traffic and viewership? Seems to me they would (and, admittedly, the last few days have proven it for us here at Midwest Sports Fans. Thanks mainstream media!).

I could have written that Player A took steroids and that I saw it with my own eyes, but unless the MSM picks up on it, only my small legion of readers will see it. So blame me all you want for “how we got here” Ken, but once again we are misdirecting our anger and the responsibility from where it truly lies.

I wish I could have seen John and Ken’s faces during the interview. A lot of people have emailed me to say that I did a good job of staying composed. Had I seen Ken Rosenthal rolling his eyes and looking at me like I’m some sort of lower life form, staying composed might not have been so easy — and perhaps I would have said a few more things I wish I’d said…which, in hindsight, might not necessarily have been a positive.

So much has been made about my credibility and making claims that aren’t true. The problem is that, if you read my original article that started all this mess, I make no claims that aren’t true and make no accusations. I speculated.

And by the way, if you believe that speculation is a mortal sin, I’m not going to convince you of my viewpoint so you should probably just move along from blogs and the MSM, because the mainstreamers can walk around with their nose in the air, but they speculate too. And about steroids. And about specific players.

Go read these two articles, both of which were posted recently at ESPN. They have been emailed to me over and over the last 24 hours repeatedly and commented about on MSF, and both of which I’d read before all of this madness began:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090507&sportCat=mlb

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=bryant_howard&id=4163281

Sure looks like speculation with a name attached to it to me, doesn’t it? And you can say that Bryant’s article includes quotes from Ortiz and provides a complete, balanced picture; but what about Simmons? He casts aspersions on Pedro and Ortiz, not to mention pretty much every other hitter on his beloved Boston Red Sox team that broke the curse.

And before you think I’m attacking Simmons, remember my point here. I think it’s a great article by Simmons and that every single iota and insinuation and speculative statement that he includes is warranted and within reason. I guess the difference is that he’s The Sports Guy and I’m the Mom’s Basement Guy so I’m not allowed to do the same thing.

Standards and integrity and balanced reported indeed MSM. Bravo.

I was attacked yesterday by many in the MSM for doing exactly what so many in the MSM do already. Yet, I don’t recall a whole lot of outrage when Simmons’ or Bryant’s articles came out.

And you know what? I don’t care. It is what it is and if there is one group of people that I truly am not concerned about how they view me or Midwest Sports Fans, it’s mainstream media members who have an inherent bias about bloggers and see us only a threat to them. My peers in the blogging community had my back yesterday, and nothing meant more to be than that.

What happened yesterday is a perfect illustration of one reason why the mainstream media finds itself in the troubling times it is in. There is absolutely a way for blogs and the MSM to co-exist, but the delicate balance between the two gets shaken every time the hard work that I and other bloggers do is cast aside as “cowardly” and “pathetic” and “irresponsible.” Well you know what else is cowardly, pathetic, and irresponsible? Making specific accusations, attacking, and calling people out publicly when you haven’t even read what they wrote or investigated what the supposedly said, or at least have a funny way of showing it if you did. And I’m not addressing any one person in particular here, but rather the entire group of people who have jumped on the bandwagon while forgetting to read the post that started all of this. Well here it is right here:

http://www.midwestsportsfans.com/2009/06/raul-ibanez-great-start-comes-with-steroid-speculation/

Feel free to go read it and tell me if this is what you take from it: “Until there’s proof to the contrary, shouldn’t all of us – from the traditional mainstream media to bloggers – be judicious about calling people cheaters?”

That is one of the final statements in the Inquirer article that took this story to the second level and led to the third level mushroom cloud that occurred when Raul Ibanez commented publicly about it.

To answer your question John, yes, we should be judicious about calling people cheaters. We should also be judicious about characterizing someone’s statements as calling someone a cheater when the reality is that the statements in question merely speculated that, like everyone else in his profession, he could be a cheater. There is a gigantic canyon of difference between the two, and I wish I’d been a little more on my toes during OTL and more effectively expressed this point.

At the end of the day, the point I just made is at the heart of why this story became what it did yesterday. I understand attacks on the Ibanez story because everyone is entitled to their opinion regarding the research, writing style, legitimacy of the speculation, etc. Without differing opinions, what the hell’s the point of blogging? But somehow I became the face the problem.

And really, that’s fine.

If anyone wanted me to kowtow yesterday or have a change of heart and start doubting what I wake up and do here every morning, it didn’t happen. Quite the contrary.

I have had Midwest Sports Fans for less than a year and work hard every day to build the site’s reputation among its peers, to build our readership, and to make sure that everything published on here is done so for the right reasons: because it’s genuine, heartfelt, compelling, informative, and thought-provoking. We don’t always hit on the last three despite our best efforts, but the first two have got to be there.

And I think that most bloggers, at least the ones I read, would tell you the same thing.

And when all is said and done, do we want to drive traffic, gain exposure, get a taste of what life in the MSM is like, come a little closer to our sports heroes, and — if we’re willing to really work at it — make a little money? You’re damn right we do. Every single one of us. And there is not a damn thing wrong with that in any way.

Find me someone who publishes their writing for public consumption and who tells you they don’t care about exposure or generating a reaction. I hear John Calipari is looking for a recruiting coordinator; said writer would be a perfect fit because their version of truth and honesty could unequivocally be questioned. (Damnit, there I go speculating again…)

Main idea time: Raul Ibanez is upset that his name got lumped in with the many, many people who have been specifically implicated in steroid use or actually tested positive. As I said yesterday, if all he heard was “some blogger accused you of using steroids” (which is what I’m beginning to think happened, though I don’t and can’t know for sure…so yes, I am SPECULATING…again!) then I understand him being upset. The problem is that I never accused him, and my post and my point have been bastardized and way over-simplified by people (I’m talking to you MSM) looking to capitalize on the “keyword richness” of the story.

So perhaps Raul Ibanez might be able understand why I’m a little upset too. Maybe, maybe not. At the end of the day, I guess it’s not really all that important.

But here is what is important, and it’s my final point this morning.

I’ve received a number of emails from supportive observers whom I appreciate. However, many of them have had made the following point, which I will paraphrase thusly: “Won’t be it great when Raul Ibanez tests positive for steroids!? You’ll be vindicated! I can’t wait!”

Let me be as clear as I possibly can be: I could not disagree more strongly with that sentiment.

Lost among the MSF vs Raul Ibanez battle that has played out all over the Internet for the past 24 hours, is that fact I like, admire, and respect Raul Ibanez. And I am rooting for him. If you made me bet my last $10 on whether or not he’s using steroids, I would say no he’s not. In fact, if I made a list of 10-20 baseball players that I “believe in” the most, he would be on that list. But the fact is that he plays Major League Baseball so I don’t believe totally in anyone and I would not be surprised if I never saw that $10 again either. Read a little more carefully if you think I’m indicting Raul Ibanez there. It seems like there is a much broader point being made to me.

Question the intentions of my post if you like, and many of you have and will continue to do so, but my goal was to find every reason I could to say “I am ruling out steroids as a reason for Raul Ibanez’s fast start because of the following objective statistical reasons…” Though I’ve since come across compelling reasons elsewhere that I did not originally consider, and that I’ve been genuinely excited to find, my initial analysis did not lead me to conclude that I personally could completely rule out at least considering the possibility of PEDs. And even with more information I still can’t totally rule it out in my own mind.

But I DO NOT want Raul Ibanez to test positive and I WILL NOT gain any sense of satisfaction if he ever does. I WANT to believe in baseball players again, and Raul Ibanez going down in such a way would further erode the trust that I and so many other baseball fans have lost. I’m glad Raul Ibanez defended himself strongly, and I support him wholeheartedly in any effort he wants to go to in an attempt to distance himself from PED speculation. If he wants to comment further, I’ll provide him an unedited forum on MSF in a heartbeat, regardless of what, if anything, he wants to say about me. If he takes a public drug test and it’s clean, I will post it here and promote it with the same focus and zeal that I promote any other piece of content on this site — and probably moreso.

I was backed into a corner yesterday and my words and thoughts have been made out to be something that they are not. But the corner that I started out in, and the corner I remain in, is Raul Ibanez’s corner. Does that sound incredibly ironic after the last 48 hours? You betcha. And you skeptical readers out there are free to speculate all you want about my intentions, my thoughts, my actions, my words, etc.

But if you want the truth, I just gave it to you.

Based on yesterday, the Rosenthalian skeptics out there may never read this far to find out the truth; but then again, their opinion really isn’t all that important anyway.

Thanks for reading to those of you who made it all the way here. As your reward, here are a few of my favorite takes on yesterday, starting out with my favorite one from Joe Posnanski (which includes some of the additional compelling statistical evidence I described above). Not all of these are completely in my defense, but all of these people at least showed me that they took the time to read and not just jump on the bandwagon with ill-informed perceptions:

• What’s eating Raul? — (Joe Posnanski)
• What’s eating Raul? — (Joe P on SI.com, with my comments included at the end. This post, to me, is why Joe P is one of the best in the business.)
• Raul Ibanez: Know Your Role and Shut Your Mouth — (Black Sports Online)
• Ibanez vs Midwest Sports Fans Controversy: Blame the Philly Inquirer — (Hugging Harold Reynolds…with a great actual picture of me in my mom’s basement!)
• On That Raul vs Blogger Ordeal — (Crashburn Alley)
• The Article Behind Raul Ibanez’s Righteous Indignation — (Lookout Landing)
• The Real Deal on the Raul Ibanez Steroids Accusations — (Bleacher Report)
• Raul Ibanez steroid issue exposes sports journalism cliches — (Chicago Sun-Times Blogs)
• Raul Ibanez debacle: blame the Philly Inquirer, not blogger Jerod Morris — (AlanaG.com)
• Reaping what You’ve Sown — (18 to 88)
• Closing Time: Ibanez Defends, Madson Saves, De La Rosa Wins — (Yahoo! Sports Roto Arcade)
• Charlie Manuel has the last word on Ibanez and steroids — (The Fightins…I actually don’t think this is a fair assessment at all, and further proves how far removed from my original post the public commentary has gotten on this issue.

There are many, many other good posts about this issue as well. I’ll try to get more links up to them at some point later. The final place I will direct you to is the On the DL Podcast that I participated in. Give it a listen and support Dan Levy, whose been one of MSF’s biggest supporters throughout the whole.

Thanks again to all of those who supported Midwest Sports Fans this week. And to my blogging peers, I just hope I made you proud and have represented our profession and our passion well. Above all, that’s been the most important thing to me during this entire overblown and unnecessary saga.

(Why do I get the feeling that somewhere right now Ken Rosenthal is rolling his eyes…?)

Update: Adding more great links as I find them:

• Commentary: Raul Ibanez vs Blogger — (Macho Row)
• Ibanez’s Reaction Is What We Want — (America’s White Boy)
• On Raul Ibanez and Steroids — (Lady At the Bat)
• Quote of the Day: My Urine, My Blood, My Stool — (Circling the Bases)
• John Heyman Is a Hypocrite When It Comes to PED Speculation — (Rays Index)
• Raul Ibanez, Jerod Morris, and Cynicism — (Dan Shanoff)
• Ibanez Willing to Prove He’s Clean — (ESPN.com)
• Should the Media React to Blogger Speculation if There’s No Tangible Evidence? — (The Big Lead)
• Worldwide Leader Bullies Blogger with Unfavorable Light — (Cleveland Frowns)
• Ibanez Takes a Swing a Steroid Speculation — (Wall Street Journal Daily Fix)
• Ibanez Irate About PED Speculation, But Was Blogger Wrong? — (The Scores Report)
• The Truth About Bloggers vs Mainstream Media — (Chip Shots)
• ESPN OTL Segment Shows Journalists Still Dissing Bloggers — (DodgerFan.net)
• Ibanez Flap: New Media Isn’t At Fault; Bumb old Baseball Is — (AJC, Mark Bradley Blog)
• Here’s what bothers me about the Raul Ibanez controversy — (RotoInfo MLB Blog)
• It’s Irresponsible, It’s Unfair, It Needs to Stop — (J.Ellet Lambie)
• Blogger responsibility comes under scrutiny in light of Ibanez speculation — (Hot Stove Philly)
• The Unfortunate Ambushing of Jerod Morris’ Raul Ibanez Post — (Deadspin)
• Defending Maniacal Bloggers — (The Sweet Spot Blog by Rob Neyer)
• Raul Ibanez’s Stool Sample Angered by Raul Ibanez’s Comments — (Oh Murph)
• Judgment on Raul Ibanez and His Response — (From the Stands Sports Radio)
• The Curious Case of Ken Rosenthal and John Gonzalez: Retard Speculation Perhaps Unfair, but Lecture To Blogger Raising Eyebrows — (Drunk Jays Fans)
  

- Ken Rosenthal photo credit: 215 Sports

- Raul Ibanez photo credit: We’re The Team to Beat via ESPN.com

Update: The video is posted on ESPN.com now. I’ll probably post again later with more thoughts, because after watching it I definitely have a few more things to say. Anyway, here it is:

Here are my initial thoughts and reactions (written before I had a chance to watch it):

Great experience and I appreciate ESPN allowing me to come on and be accountable for and defend my post.

The most consistent reaction I am getting from people who watched it is that they felt like Ken Rosenthal and John Gonzalez were attacking me. I have to admit that it is hard to assess that with the mic in my ear as my only link to what was going on, but I did feel like my post was being unfairly characterized as being more accusatory than it was. I don’t particularly have a problem with this because, well, it is what it is, but that is the reason why I a) kept coming back to the point that I never accused Raul Ibanez of using steroids, only stated that I thought speculation was reasonable; and b) tried to bring the discussion back to the larger issue of why genuine and well-intentioned sports fans like myself would write such a post: the recent history of Major League Baseball that has conditioned us all to suspect the worst.

One point I did want to expound upon further and I’m not sure how well I explained it on the show draws on what Ken Rosenthal said about it being a different era than it was 10 years ago. Your darn right it’s a different era. Whereas before players, teams, and owners had to do more guesswork about how fans were reacting and responding to the stories published by the MSM and the events on the field, blogs give them a direct view into the heartbeat of the group of people who make the games possible: fans.

And guess what? The reality is that whether it be in stadiums, on the radio, in sports bars, in private conversations, on message boards, on Twitter…everywhere…sports fans, and especially baseball fans, are disappointed and frustrated that we can’t trust what we see, and an era has emerged in which everyone is suspected. Guilty until proven innocent may be the burden proof in a court of law, but innocent until proven guilty has become the reality of the sports world with respect to baseball and its fans. I, nor any of my fellow sports fans and bloggers, should apologize for living in a reality created by the players, owners, union, and Major League Baseball. We’re just reacting honestly to what we see.

As I said on the show at the beginning, though I think I stuttered a bit because I was nervous, if Raul Ibanez read only the Philadelphia Inquirer account of my piece, I understand why he’s upset. It characterized my post as calling out Ibanez out for being a steroid user. How ironic is it, then, that I state in my post that my entire goal in writing it was to debunk the steroid spectulation that I’d heard elsewhere?

And even if Raul Ibanez had read my piece, and maybe he has — I don’t know — I would assume that he’d be upset to have his name associated with steroids. My entire point is wondering whether I’m really the person he should upset with.

Update: I do want to make one more point regarding Ibanez. I absolutely applaud him for standing up and addressing the speculation right off the bat. Good for him. And if really is willing to take a test right now and everything else he said, I applaud him even more. It is no guarantee of anything, because we all remember Rafael Palmeiro shaking his finger at Congress, but it is a hell of a lot better than so many guys who have just sat back and said nothing. I’ll say again what I’ve said before: I am rooting for Raul Ibanez, I like him and respect him as a player, and absolutely hope he is clean. I think he misunderstood what I was trying to express in my post, but regardless, I applaud him wholeheartedly for being proactive in responding.

Baseball has had a problem with steroids for a long time, and what’s happened over the last 48 hours is proof that the problem lingers perhaps moreso than we all even thought. But instead of the players or Major League Baseball having to wonder what people are thinking, their most die-hard fans are publishing their thoughts every day in sports blogs. What a tremendous opportunity for the leagues and players to listen to the people who pay for and support their profession.

Get upset that the steroids story won’t go away; I don’t blame you. But I didn’t create the problem and I certainly didn’t start the speculation. Tell me how my post is all that different from the story in Sports Illustrated from earlier this year about Albert Pujols? The story addresses steroid rumors that have circulated about Pujols while stating the plight current baseball stars face because of the inevitable cloud of suspicion that accompanies great on-field production:

But this is not a great time to be the best anything in baseball. Barry Bonds was the best player, and now he is facing federal perjury charges. Roger Clemens was the best pitcher, and every other day another newspaper story takes him down one more notch. Mark McGwire was the best home run hitter, and after telling Congress that he did not want to talk about the past, he has all but disappeared into a Pynchon-like seclusion. Alex Rodriguez was the best player, and now he tentatively admits guilt while A-ROID! headlines splash and fans heckle and a hip injury shuts him down.

…

This is the uneasy state of the new baseball hero. Albert Pujols knows he cannot prove to people that he has never used steroids. He knows that there will always be doubters.

That article was written by Joe Posnanski, who I’m a big fan of, and by no means am I attacking him. Quite the contrary, I think the piece was great and addressed an issue that most, if not all, baseball fans have either discussed or thought about. I just want people who think I went out on some crazy limb and who accume me of being some whack blogger to understand that even the MSMers are acknowledging the cold, hard reality that Major League baseball faces.

That was my intention as well. I wish that a fresh comment from Raul Ibanez had accompanied my original post, as Posnanski has from Pujols in his article, but the truth is that I did not feel it would be possible for me to get one. So I linked out to the ESPN article in which Ibanez has denied steroid use in the past and was objective as I could possibly be. And I emailed the Phillies after the fact to open up Midwest Sports Fans for him to say anything he wanted in response.

In the end, however, the sad reality of baseball won out; and even for a guy that I wanted to completely exonerate from speculation, I could not honestly bring myself to do it. As I’ve said repeatedly, I personally think Ibanez is clean and I’m making no judgments whatsoever based on 250 ABs. All I’ve ever said is that the speculation was out there — it’s out there for every baseball player — and try as I might, I was not able to provide enough concrete evidence for myself to personally shut the door to the speculation.

Is that wrong? Some people apparently think so. I just look at it as the reality of the situation, and we can either hide from it and pretend it does not exist, as we all did — fans and media — during the 90s and early 00s, or engage in genuine debate about it. Look at the comments to the article. Because I write my piece, plenty of Ibanez fans have come forward with more compelling statistical evidence that I didn’t even think about. If anything, when you combine Ibanez’s strong rebuttal of the mischaracterized notion from the Philadelphia Inquirer that I’d accused him of using, and the great number of defenders who have discussed his character and provided additional statistical reasons for his success, I think more people may now be inclined to believe in his numbers that perhaps were before. Who knows.

The truth is, as I’ve commented on the posts here at MSF, I personally believe in him more now. Not totally — I don’t believe in any baseball player totally — but moreso than when I hit publish on the original article.

So all of the anger in the world can be directed at me. I guess on a certain level I understand it, and I can understand Raul Ibanez erroneously speculating that I’m a 42-year old blogger who lives in my mother’s basement — I guess that if Ibanez is really clean you could say we’re even on speculation that turns out to not quite match reality — but don’t let anger and emotional reactions divert your attention from the main point:

Major League Baseball has reached a point where everyone, including two of its most high character, consistent, and hard working players, are the subject of general speculation by genuine baseball fans about whether or not their numbers are legit — baseball fans who want nothing more than to believe in their heroes whose mighty on-field exploits are a daily obsession for so many of us.

Say what you will about my post, about me, and about bloggers in general. But to me that is the saddest fact of all.

Update: One final thought, as people are calling and texting me about what was said on Around the Horn. Apparently Jay Mariotti, who I’ve been very hard on in the past here on MSF, agreed with me or defended me to some extent. I haven’t seen it, but this is what I’m being told. If so…I’d like to extend my wholehearted appreciation to Jay for the support.