David Ortiz has a chip on his shoulder the size of Manny Ramirez.
ESPN retold the New York Times story in 2009 that revealed that Ortiz and Ramirez were among the 100 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003 when both were members of the Boston Red Sox.
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The results were supposed to be anonymous and used only to determine whether Major League Baseball and would be allowed to institute mandatory random drug testing of players based on the percentage of positive tests among the sample.
ESPN reported that federal agents obtained the results, which led to the leak. Ortiz said he learned of his positive test when he saw a report on ESPN.
Ortiz wrote a first-person account for theplayerstribune.com in which he showed he still is haunted by those events.
"In some people's minds, I will always be considered a cheater. And that's bulls**t. Mark my words: Nobody in MLB history has been tested for PEDs more than me. You know how many times I've been tested since 2004? More than 80. They say these tests are random. If it's really random, I should start playing the damn lottery. Some people still think the testing is a joke. It's no joke. Ten times a season these guys come into the clubhouse or my home with their briefcases. I have never failed a single one of those tests and I never will.
"But that doesn't matter to some people. Some people still look at me like I'm a cheater because my name was on a list of players who got flagged for PEDs in 2003.
"No one had ever told me I'd failed any test. Now six years later some documents get leaked and they're saying I'm dirty. I called my agent and asked what was going on. He didn't have any answers for me. I called the MLB Players' Association and they didn't have any answers for me. To this day, nobody has any answers for me. Nobody can tell me what I supposedly tested positive for. They say they legally can't, because the tests were never supposed to be public.
""Let me tell you something. Say whatever you want about me -- love me, hate me. But I'm no [expletive]. I never knowingly took any steroids."
It will be interesting to see how the media responds to the 39-year-old slugger entering his 19th season.
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