Posted by David Wade on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 8:17 pm

Nothing like chiming in on a bit of a firestorm early in the ole’ blogging career, but at least this is timely (for another day or two maybe) and relevant (it’s about baseball). For readers who don’t know already, a blogger did a very nice piece on the surprisingly studly start to Raul Ibanez’s 2009 season. The author studied several aspects of Raul’s season, including his home park, pitchers he’s faced, the switch to a new league, and the slight- almost astronomical chance- that a Major League Baseball player has taken performance enhancing drugs. The latter was mentioned almost as an aside, as if the author sought nearly every possible answer before acknowledging steroids were a possibility.

All of the analysis was to be ignored, save the question of whether or not PEDs could play a role in a guy in his late 30s soaring to a career high in home run frequency.

When a reporter covering the Phillies later asked Ibanez about the ‘accusation’, this story grew quite a bit- mainly because Raul was incensed and went off about it, believing this was a crazy suggestion and an irresponsible bit of rumor mongering.

Raul could have laughed off the news, I guess. But, he didn’t. And his bitter response probably reminds too many people of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro, and Alex Rodriguez. All deniers, and some vehemently so. Another thing those guys all have in common is that pretty much everyone now knows they did in fact take steroids. We demand our innocent accused to ’shout from the rooftops’ their denials, but it is strange that we do when doing so often has a decent correlation with looming proof of their culpability.

Raul could draw from experience in responding, because back in the 2007-08 off-season, he had to answer questions about steroids. It is interesting to note that the player making the accusation in that article was in the Seattle clubhouse corresponding with stints of several players named in the Mitchell Report. And, as it happens, times when Ibanez was also with Seattle. His rebuttal then wasn’t nearly as sharp, probably because the person saying the Mariner clubhouse was a haven for PEDs was a former player as opposed to a ‘guy blogging in his mother’s basement’.

Which lets me meander to my next observation. Along the way, something else was brought into the debate, and that’s the fact that the guy who brought this all up a couple of days ago did so in a blog. You see, regular-type media guys don’t like bloggers. So, not only do you have the intensity of Raul’s rebuttal, you also get some contempt for internet authors thrown in as well. The second factor probably gave this story more juice. It certainly had more than this story, which was about linking a guy to steroids who would normally be a lock for the Hall of Fame and is much more famous than Raul Ibanez. Unfortunately for that author, he writes for a big-time paper, so no one paid as much attention.

Well, to sum this up, I have some contempt of my own. It’s for the regular media types that seem shocked every time the word steroid comes up around baseball. I am not about to condone the use of PEDs. That said, I pretty much accept it simply because I’m realistic. I’m fairly confident that a lot of athletes in nearly every sport use something. At what point do we connect the dots between cyclists, football players, Olympic athletes, and baseball players to come up with a clearer picture? We know that guys in action movies use, for crying out loud. How does the media continue to act as if this is -

a. something that is mainly found in MLB

b. the most heinous crime this side of dog fighting

It’s not just an MLB problem, even though that’s what draws the most coverage and outrage from the media. It is a high-level athlete problem. And if it’s going to be covered, then I wouldn’t mind seeing it covered in totality, not just when some dude in his basement asks a fairly logical question.