Spring Break
Raul Ibanez and the blogger
Mike Northup
Issue date: 6/15/09 Section: Sports
Roger Clemens has had his career legacy tarnished amid steroid speculation. This year, two of baseball's biggest sluggers - Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez - were caught dead-center in PED controversies of their own.
The soft spot left in our hearts by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa's home run chase 11 years ago has since been replaced with the cold, hard realization that in today's ballgame, you just don't know who to trust.
In that light, it's hard to pretend that Morris was the only one who could have considered the notion that Ibanez could be on PEDs. The idea was already out there. Morris just brought it into a public forum.
But unfortunately for Morris, it's not the summer of 1998 anymore. We live in a day and age where Shaq can send a Twitter post about what he had for breakfast and, faster than you can say the word "blogosphere," it'll be a newsflash on every major news network.
That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but in reality, if someone touches on a hot-button issue on the Internet, the ensuing controversy has the potential to spread like wildfire.
This whole situation serves as a reminder of how the times have changed quite a bit over the last 10 years or so. These days, no player is completely immune to allegations of cheating. And these days, any fan that makes his or her voice loud enough can get swept up in a controversy that hits the front pages of ESPN and Sports Illustrated.
Morris should have been a little more careful with his words when he posted on his blog, but in today's world, someone else was bound to do so in similar fashion if he had not. It's not Ibanez's fault that all of this is happening. That's just the way things are in baseball these days.
Maybe at one point we'll all be able to appreciate a guy having a season like the one Ibanez is having right now, but until then, we'll have to settle for the controversies.
The soft spot left in our hearts by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa's home run chase 11 years ago has since been replaced with the cold, hard realization that in today's ballgame, you just don't know who to trust.
In that light, it's hard to pretend that Morris was the only one who could have considered the notion that Ibanez could be on PEDs. The idea was already out there. Morris just brought it into a public forum.
But unfortunately for Morris, it's not the summer of 1998 anymore. We live in a day and age where Shaq can send a Twitter post about what he had for breakfast and, faster than you can say the word "blogosphere," it'll be a newsflash on every major news network.
That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but in reality, if someone touches on a hot-button issue on the Internet, the ensuing controversy has the potential to spread like wildfire.
This whole situation serves as a reminder of how the times have changed quite a bit over the last 10 years or so. These days, no player is completely immune to allegations of cheating. And these days, any fan that makes his or her voice loud enough can get swept up in a controversy that hits the front pages of ESPN and Sports Illustrated.
Morris should have been a little more careful with his words when he posted on his blog, but in today's world, someone else was bound to do so in similar fashion if he had not. It's not Ibanez's fault that all of this is happening. That's just the way things are in baseball these days.
Maybe at one point we'll all be able to appreciate a guy having a season like the one Ibanez is having right now, but until then, we'll have to settle for the controversies.
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