David Ortiz has been the centerpiece of this Boston Red Sox season since it began.
So maybe it's not that surprising that he still is, if not for the same reason.
In the beginning, it was because of his awful start, the theories of which swarmed like bugs around dead fruit.
He was older than he's supposed to be.
He had been on performance enhancing drugs and now he wasn't.
He couldn't get around on the fastball anymore.
His wrist still bothered him.
His swing was all messed up.
He needed glasses.
He had personal issues.
Those were the rumors that seemed to fly around Fenway Park back then like windblown pop-ups. Another day, another theory.
But somehow it didn't really matter then. Ortiz is immensely popular around here and no one liked to see him struggle so dramatically, looking as lost at the plate as lost can be, like a song played at the wrong speed. Besides, the Red Sox were off to another great start. Jason Bay was doing a Manny imitation, the pitching staff from top to bottom was excellent, and everything seemed to be in place for another great season. And they were 8-0 against the Yankees early on.
Ortiz is still the centerpiece, but it all seems a little more problematic. That's what happens when you lose six straight to the Rays and Yankees. That's what happens when you go 31 innings without scoring a run. That's what happens when the bullpen seems under siege, Dice-K is in Florida, Tim Wakefield is hurt, the John Smoltz experiment didn't work and the Red Sox left New York looking like dead men walking.
Now Ortiz is in the middle of the crosshairs, due to the disclosure on July 30 that he'd tested positive for something back in 2003. His news conference Saturday in New York raised only more questions.
Did he take steroids?
Did he not?
Did he take something else?
Did he not?
Pick any one of these things you want, for we're likely never going to know. That's the new reality about this steroids era in baseball, the sense that it's now all about lawyers and spin doctors. To the point that those Red Sox fans that want to think that Ortiz was just some wide-eyed innocent in all this will believe him, others will not. That's what this has come to, too many questions and too few answers.
So much of it is all in the past, and it's really in no one's best interest to get to the truth, however murky that might be. Major League Baseball would like it simply to go away. The Players Association wants to circle the wagons. The fans are tired of it.
Is it any wonder?
But here is Ortiz back in the center of all of it, this issue that never seems to go away, just as the Red Sox seemingly have imploded. And what makes it difficult is we like Ortiz, this big likeable guy with the big smile and the great nickname, this man who's arguably the greatest clutch hitter in Red Sox history. We want to remember him as Big Papi, this man who did heroic things, not as someone whose accomplishments might come with an asterisk.
And no one is suggesting that the Red Sox' troubles in Tampa and New York had a whole lot to do with Ortiz's name is on the 2003 positive test list. When you go 31 innings without scoring, your problems are deeper than an aging slugger. Especially when you're starting pitching has become as thin as a runway model, shortstop reduced to community auditions, Bay cooling off, Jason Varitek playing on fumes, Mike Lowell is aging in front of our eyes and the bullpen looks nowhere near as impressive as it did earlier.
Yet in many ways Ortiz had become the symbolic face of this team.
Part of it, certainly, is that it's not 2004 anymore.
So many of the distinctive personalities back them are gone: Manny, Pedro, Johnny Damon, Kevin Millar, Derek Lowe. Back then the Red Sox were a free-wheeling bunch, the self-proclaimed "idiots," and the symbolic leader was Ortiz, with a smile that lit up Fenway, and a style that charmed the media.
Today's Sox are different, as if the characters all have been purged.
Coincidence?
You tell me.
But Ortiz is almost the last carryover from the old days, someone who all but leads by the force of his personality.
So it's a little disconcerting to see him now in this summer of his discontent, so much of the spark gone. He was fighting for his career even before the drug test news. That's what happens when you spend the first two months or so with every at-bat seemingly a referendum on whether you're done or not.
Even if he seemed to find another baseball life in June and July, his average now is roughly .220, not good enough for a DH and only a shadow of what he once was.
And now this steroids mess, the last thing Ortiz needed.
A mess in a season that's quickly turned complicated, both for Ortiz and for the Red Sox.
(Contact Bill Reynolds at breynold@projo.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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