Everything to do with those tests and everything before 2003, Red Sox related or not, gets a pass for me anyway. That's not what that test was for. It was to determine if something needed to be done. It worked and something has been done. I'm more than willing to give Ortiz the benefit of the doubt, but even if I thought he was stone-cold guilty of sticking steroid needles in his butt, I don't care. That's the atmosphere that was prevalent at that time in baseball. That's on everyone and steps have been taken to clean it up.
This includes literally everyone to me. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, everyone. I'm free, as a fan, to dislike them both still because they're assholes who took their useage to such ridiculous levels that the world had to pay attention, but I'm not going to call any of them cheaters.
While I'm neither alone nor part of the majority with that attitude towards this, I do think the overall shock and outrage over anything to do with these tests is all but over. If Ortiz didn't genuinely believe that he was as innocent as he says then he wouldn't have opened his mouth. I believe him.
Even the part about him suggesting it may have been a supplement from the DR back then vs a GNC today. That, to me, strikes me as a man trying to figure out an explanation, not changing his story. And that comes from experience.
& or 8 years ago, I was working at this shitty carwash that had been taken over by a new company. That new Company worked us to the bone for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week while we renovated everything and gave away free car washes to everyone for a month. One day, $3000 in cash went missing and those $3000 were my responsibility (it shouldn't have been, long story short, but it was). I had no idea what happened to the money. I was so exhausted that I literally could not pick out one day from the next. I was picked up and questioned by the police (that was brutal, let me tell you) and every single person who knew me would tell me to just confess to stealing the money so we could move on. The evidence certainly pointed to me, to the point that I was almost convinced by everyone else that I actually DID steal it and just blocked it from my memory.
I have to tell you, unless you've been through it, you have no idea what it feels like to be accused of a crime you didn't commit and the idea of people sitting back on their chairs trying to judging you without a fucking clue as to what happened is so utterly infuriating that I can't even describe it. But during that time, I probably came up with a dozen or so possible scenarios for what had happened. If I was a public figure, I could easily see the whole world just assuming I was guilty and taking those different stories and parsing them, saying I was changing my tune, etc.
So, don't be that guy (this not to anyone in particular). Especially for OUR fucking Ortiz. He says he didn't do it and there's no real evidence that he did, that's it.