Jerod Morris in the Midwest Sports Fans blog had the audacity to wonder whether people would think Raul Ibanez has been aided by performance-enhancing drugs in his one-third of a career year at age 37.
Putting Ibanez's name in the same headline as "steroids" called the blog post to the attention of someone in Philadelphia. That someone might or might not have been Ibanez himself, but he spoke out on how he would bring legal action against anyone who slandered or defamed him, and was willing to undergo drug testing.
Here's a quote from a Philadelphia Inquirer article by Jim Salisbury:
"You can have my urine, my hair, my blood, my stool - anything you can test," Ibanez said. "I'll give you back every dime I've ever made" if the test is positive.
Here's where I stand. I admire Ibanez as a player. He's not going to help a team much in left field, but he is (and has been) a steady run producer. He plays almost every day, and seems to be a stand-up guy from the limited exposure I've had to him. But is Ibanez a guy who should all of a sudden be on pace to hit 50 home runs, or is he a latter-day Brady Anderson or Luis Gonzalez?
The most disappointing thing about Ibanez's comments is that they're cheap and meaningless. I'll stop short of calling them gutless. But he knows the Players' Association would never let any player undergo testing to prove a point. We saw that when Rick Reilly challenged Sammy Sosa a few years ago by actually bringing a specimen cup out to batting practice.
I also won't quote Act 5 of Macbeth by saying Ibanez's comments were "a tale told by an idiot," but those words are "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
To quote Act 3 of Hamlet, Ibanez "doth protest too much, methinks."
Or perhaps he simply misremembers.
No comments:
Post a Comment