David Ortiz thinks Yankees leaked ’03 PED results
Big Papi thinks the Yankees leaked his positive test results to distract attention from their own PED controversies.
When David Ortiz and 100 or so other players tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003, the results were supposed to stay secret. MLB was using the supposedly anonymous tests as a baseline to determine if full-blown testing was needed, nothing more.
Nonetheless, Ortiz’s results were leaked to the New York Times in July 2009.
The retired Boston Red Sox slugger has been pissed about it ever since. Now he thinks he knows who gave his name to the press: The Evil Empire itself, the New York Yankees.
"“What was the reason for them to come out with something like that?” he said during an interview with Boston’s WEEI. “The only thing that I can think of, to be honest with you, a lot of big guys from the Yankees were being caught. And no one from Boston. This was just something that leaked out of New York, and they had zero explanation about it.”"
Alex Rodriguez also tested positive in 2003, when he was with the Texas Rangers. His results leaked several months before the Times reported on Ortiz and Manny Ramirez’s failed results. By that time, of course, A-Rod was a Yankee.
Other Yankees, including Jason Giambi, Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens, were tied to PEDs before July 2009.
Even so, Big Papi is almost certainly wrong. As NBC’s Craig Calcatarra points out, individual teams did not have access to the results.
Also, it’s worth noting how Times reporter Michael S. Schmidt described his sourcing in the 2009 article:
"“The information about Ramirez and Ortiz emerged through interviews with lawyers and others connected to the pending litigation. The lawyers spoke anonymously because the testing information was under seal by a court order. “"
The most likely source of the leak was the U.S. government.
Federal prosecutors seized the list of 2003 failed tests in 2004 as part of an investigation of PED distributors. A court later ruled the government’s action was improper overreach.
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The commissioner’s office and the players’ union also had access to the results, but it is hard to come up with an explanation for why either would have leaked the results.
In any case, Ortiz always had maintained the test results were not accurate and that he never took PEDs. “In some people’s minds, I will always be considered a cheater. And that’s bulls—,” he wrote in the Players’ Tribune.
Look for the 2003 results to come up again in 2022, when Ortiz becomes eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame. For some self-righteous writers, the anonymous test results will be a reason not to vote for Ortiz.