Cheaters Sometimes Win

As a diehard Red Sox fan, I was crushed to read yesterday that both Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz tested positive for banned substances in 2003. Manny wasn't all that surprising given his suspension this season, but Big Papi was a huge blow. Ortiz was the heart and soul of that 2004 team that broke the curse, and now everyone would assume it was fueled by the juice.

Jmac at Beyond the Trestle argues today that it's not really cheating if everyone's doing it. While I get the point he is trying to make, I still think it's despicable and worthy of punishment. I also think that trying to defend this behavior as "well, everyone was doing it" will only make Red Sox fans look like idiots willing to break that curse at any cost. It reminds me of this great Bill Simmons column that he wrote after Manny's bust back in May.

Yes, many of us who prayed we would see the curse broken in our lifetimes would probably gladly say, just like Bill's dad, "I'd do it again!"...even dirty. But we should hate ourselves for thinking that way. Really, does it matter that we "broke" the curse if we had to do it on the backs of guys who had career years under mysterious circumstances and who we now know were potentially still playing on the residue of 2003 juicing? If we found out that the entire team was playing with corked bats for the 2004 season, would we be OK with that too? Even though I love the New England Patriots and don't really believe they only won three Super Bowls because they taped other teams' signals, I still recognize that I can't defend that behavior to the rest of the league's fans. Similarly, I am not about to try and defend a juicer even if he happens to be my favorite current Red Sox player.

And as for the others who will now assert that the two Red Sox titles in this decade are now tainted, all Sox fans can do now is hope that enough information about other users comes out that EVERY title in the steriods era ends up tainted. Then, we can hopefully get baseball and its fans to recognize that we either have to accept that performance enhancing drugs are part of the game and have changed it forever, or get them to commit to cleaning up the game at any cost and start testing players religiously throughout the season. This crisis threatens to ruin not just the relief of Sox fans, but all of baseball if it continues on its present path.