When I first heard that Ibanez was speaking out against a blogger for daring to question the purity of his bloodstream this year, I thought that he heard/read this. Evidently not.
"I'll come after people who defame or slander me," he said before last night's game against the New York Mets. "It's pathetic and disgusting. There should be some accountability for people who put that out there."However, I DO like his tact here:
A column in yesterday's Inquirer brought to light an Internet blogger who wondered if Ibanez had used such drugs.
"Unfortunately, I understand the environment we're in and the events that have led us to this era of speculation," he said.Whew, I'm not 42 and thankfully my parents have no basement. But I am always accountable.
[...]
"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.
"I'll put that up against the jobs of anyone who writes this stuff," he said. "Make them accountable. There should be more credibility than some 42-year-old blogger typing in his mother's basement. It demeans everything you've done with one stroke of the pen."
And in case you weren't sure where I stand on Ibanez's surge:
Do I think that Ibanez is cheating in some way? No, I don't think so. But doesn't it, at least, look like the same late-career outlier that we now look back at for other players and point out "ah ha!"? We've done this for every player we thought/knew was using.
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1 comment:
I think this is a point too many people are missing. Look back through the history of the game, there have always been players who have peaked later in their career.
Who knows why, but it's not uncommon. Also, maybe Ibanez is one of those rare big-contract, free agent signees who is going out and busting his butt to earn his contract, instead of sitting back and collecting a paycheck.
What's unfair is that every player who now puts up a career year will automatically get accussed of being a juicer, if only to kill electrons and fill space.
The issue is, as you've said, and I've said, a few other people not as smart as us, is that Bud and his boys need to get off thier duffs and make some kind of declaration about this.
They are going to have to draw a line in the sand and say this is the point that was pre-sterioids and post-steroids. Anything before is forgiven (mostly because there was no policy and it can't be proven) and everything after is open to criticism.
If they don't put a yardstick down, the insanity will go forever.
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