The cold, hard fact of contemporary baseball, which has been driven home yet again today, is that everyone except for Albert Pujols is on steroids. News broke this morning that David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003.

Manny’s reported performance-enhancing drug use isn’t news, but Ortiz’s is, even in spite of the rumors that have swirled around him over the last couple of years. Most big-name PED users, prior to being discovered, have preferred to stay as far away from the issue as possible. Some have conceded and toe the “steroids are bad” line. But few have taken the Frank Thomas route and crusaded against PED use. David Ortiz was one of these guys. From the Boston Globe, May 4, 2004:

“Me and Manny, we talked to [Dominican prospects]. We let them know the best way was to work your butt off. I told them [steroids], that’s not where they want to be at.”

…’I just worked hard, tried to eat the best I could, work at the gym, follow the program everybody wanted to teach me. That’s it. Why can’t they do it the same way?”

Maybe David Ortiz is a self-righteous hypocrite. Or maybe he used steroids unwittingly. Which brings me to a point I’d like to make. From the Globe, May 12, 2007:

“But it can happen any time, it can happen. I don’t know. I don’t know if I drank something in my youth, not knowing it.”

If you’re in a steroids-addled profession that hands you substances that you’re not really familiar with, and you put them into your body, you ought to figure that there’s a decent chance that you’ve used steroids. To be honest, I’m not as sick of steroid use as I am to accused players who cling to this defense like a piece of flotsam. Next up, the Globe, April 3, 2005:

“I’m one guy,” he said, “who knows that if something might do something bad to my body, I’d be afraid to use it. Any kind of stuff. I don’t want to die in 10 years. That’s what it is.

“I feel bad for people getting into that stuff, because it’s bad stuff. You may want to do well, but you need a little help, but you know what? The consequences are going to be tough.”

Irregular heartbeat, schmirregular heartbeat. That’s what I always say.

Again, what makes Ortiz’s history interesting is that he went out of his way to denounce PED use. From the Providence Journal, September 23, 2006:

Without provocation, Ortiz made a none-too-subtle reference to steroid use, the scourge of baseball for the better part of the last decade.

“This is not everything,” he said, gesturing with his bat to his surroundings. “Life is going to continue after this. I’m 30 — I might play until I’m 35. After that, I want to spend the rest of my life with my family, with my children. Everybody knows about steroids — they might help you now, but later on they (foul) you up.”

If you trust the New York Times and the steroid testing process, as I do, you conclude that today’s report is true. Like most others, I’m riding on the “steroids are bad” train, but I don’t feel compelled to be angry with Ortiz. I’m not even disheartened by his hypocrisy. I just find the hypocrisy fascinating. He lived a lie for over five years, and despite the odds, he pulled it off with impressive expertise.