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| (AP Photo) |
In an extraordinary admission, MLB Commissioner
Rob Manfred all but formally cleared
David Ortiz of any lingering charges that he used banned substances.
In an interview with The Boston Globe's Alex Speier, Manfred said the following,
"I think that the feeling was, at the time that name was leaked, that it was important to make people understand that even if your name was on that list, that it was entirely possible that you were not a positive. I do know that he’s never been a positive at any point under our program." Hopefully this will put to rest the baseless innuendo that has occasionally erupted around the 2003 "test" that leaked names to the public—including Ortiz's. Manfred went on,
"There were legitimate scientific questions about whether or not those were truly positives. If in fact there were test results like that today on a player, and we tried to discipline them, there’d be a grievance over it, it would be vetted, tried, resolved. We didn’t do that. Those issues and ambiguities were never resolved because we knew they didn’t matter. We knew we had enough positives that everyone agreed on that we knew we were going to trigger the testing the following year...Even if Rob Manfred’s name was on that list, he might have been one of those 10 or 15 where there was probably or at least possibly a very legitimate explanation that did not involve the use of a banned substance. Whatever judgment writers decide to make with respect to players who have tested positive or otherwise been adjudicated under our program, that’s up to them. That’s a policy decision. They’ve got to look into their conscience and decide how they evaluate that against the Hall of Fame criteria. What I do feel is unfair is in situations where it is leaks, rumors, innuendo, not confirmed positive test results, that that is unfair to the players. I think that would be wrong." The End.
