Quote:
Originally Posted by G1911
My point is made here - the board will leap to explain away failures and dismiss actual material evidence for Ortiz's guilt to let him off the hook, yet simultaneously leap to deny evidence is even needed to blame Clemens and complain if anyone asks for evidence.
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I don't see how acknowledging that the survey test was flawed, and then pointing out the literally dozens of times Ortiz was tested by MLB and passed each and every time, is "leaping to explain" anything. Those are just facts. Also, it's not really "actual material evidence" if the league states the results of the survey test were compromised. Manfred at the time said that there were "legitimate scientific reasons to doubt some results" and that false positives had been reported due to perfectly legal, over-the-counter supplements. This is also in no way to say that this proves unequivocally that Ortiz was clean his entire career. But it seems a stretch to call Ortiz "a known cheater" when he passed a myriad of tests from 2004 through the end of his career.
And just to point out, this isn't a personal vendetta against Clemens either. If the situations were reversed, I would make the same points about Clemens that I made about Ortiz. I'm not even saying that I think Ortiz deserved the HOF and Clemens doesn't. While Clemens was found "not guilty", that's a world apart from being "innocent". And there was considerably more smoke around Clemens accusations. So right, wrong or indifferent, I definitely can at least understand why the voters, time and again, have treated these situations differently.