First Link: written October 30, 2013, about the recent spat of allegations against Ortiz
Second link: written November 3, 2013, extremely minor mention of Mitchell Report
Third link: written November 1, 2013, about the Mitchell Report and how it relates to his HOF credentials
Fourth link: written October 30, 2013, also projecting the 2003 Mitchell Report to present day
Fifth link: written October 31, 2013, more Mitchell Report
Sixth link: written August 7, 2013, about how Ortiz still hasn’t been told how he failed that 2003 test
Seventh link: written November 1, 2013, about why you shouldn’t believe Ortiz uses PEDs.
I’ll repeat myself: these claims are new (in that the issue hasn’t arisen since the uproar when then Mitchell Report came out), and they are spurious.
As a separate question from the PED thing, I don’t like the idea that Ortiz is the favorite. I understand that he’s from Boston and was 11/16 with 8 walks in the World Series, but even if we’re only looking at champions in the major American sports in 2013 who had great championship series performances, Ortiz didn’t have anywhere near as good a year as Lebron. If the fact that there was a terrorist attack in Boston is what we’re focused on, Ortiz wasn’t the best or most valuable player on his own team, much less the city, in 2013. You have to combine the two and say “it should be somebody from Boston for narrative reasons, and somebody who did something heroic, for narrative reasons.” So Sportsman of the Year comes down essentially to two unrelated and basically random occurrences.
Cooler heads have prevailed at Time Inc. since then - that’s why Rudy Giuliani was Person of the Year in 2001 and not Osama bin Laden (or, as I like to joke, Time gave it to “Rudy Giuliani and our subscribers to advertisers - see? We didn’t choose Osama! Don’t run from us like you did when we chose Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979!”).
As for the penalty against Penn State, the only real problem I had with it was the vacating of Paterno’s wins - the only excuse I can come up with for the NCAA vacating wins when nobody involved was ineligible at the time was, they could prevent Penn State from claiming that Paterno is the #1 Division I NCAA football coach in history (since now Eddie Robinson of Grambling has more “NCAA recognized” Division I wins, and Bobby Bowden more I-A/FBS wins - and another of my jokes is, I was surprised that PSU didn’t have to reimburse Grambling and Florida State for the cost of printing up merchandise promoting these records).
That is an …interesting slant on what I just read. And of course the cites were all recent, they were only the first few links on the first page of 175,000 hits. But the issues are not new. And those cites did not say that the issue was new. You can bury your head and think that there are only a few tin foil hats out there who believe it and not many (outside of Boston) fans and sportswriters. But you would be wrong.
I didn’t say the issue was new, now did I? I said that the rumors of current use is new. If you can link to articles from the middle of say, 2008, then you can claim that this is a “persistent” issue. (Frankly, you’d need to show a series of articles from since 2003, but whatever.)
Either way, SI just put Ortiz and members of the Boston police department on their most recent cover, so I think we can safely assume that Ortiz won’t be the SOTY, and that they’re not all that worried about these new rumors of PED use.
They’ve never had a repeat awardee, and the Red Sox as a team were the choice in 2004. So, unless they break the tradition and do it again, if they go with Boston it would have to be Ortiz himself (more for his leadership both on the team and in the community, especially in April), or perhaps the marathoners and race fans and police/fire/medical people who were in the bombing and immediately acted, or the unique Boston sports fan community (which brings the Bruins into it too).
I still have a hunch it’ll be Jason Collins, either on his own or as part of a whole Gays In Sports issue, with Collins, Martina Navratilova, Sheryl Swoopes, Greg Louganis and a bunch of other gay athletes on the cover.
I mean, when I see Phil Taylor writing back page editorials about how disgraceful it is that Collins isn’t playing currently in the NBA, it becomes clear that this issue is a HUGE deal to SI. Since there’s no one athlete who had mind-blowing stats or a moment for the ages in 2012, I see SI devoting their award to a Cause.
Peyton Manning is the winner. Can’t say I saw this coming. He’s having a great season , but his horrible playoff game from January should also be considered. He hasn’t won anything yet, and Denver showed on Thursday that they’re mortal.
Must have been a different Payton Manning that was on the Colts team that won a Super Bowl a few years ago. No, wait, same guy. It’s not always based on just what you did in the past 12 months.
Still, I agree - he was not on my radar; it’s probably more of a “who else do we give it to” (like, at least IMO, it was in 2011) than anything else. I thought almost for sure it would be a split between David Ortiz and someone from the Boston Bruins (even though they lost in the Stanley Cup Final) as some sort of “Boston Strong” thing - Ortiz’s name being on a list of PED-positive-tested baseball players at one point notwithstanding.
As I mentioned upthread, the award is sportsman of the year not athlete of the year. They leave leeway in their criteria for off the field actions and intangible assists. That way they aren’t obligated to name the next Ty Cobb just because he had a great year on the field.
Quote:
“the athlete or team whose performance that year most embodies the spirit of sportsmanship and achievement.”
I never even thought of Peyton Manning as a contender… but he’s a perfectly reasonable pick.
As I said earlier, I probably would have selected Big Papi, but there really WASN’T a no-brainer pick this year. Peyton is about as good a choice as any.
Here’s an interesting list of potentially better picks than Peyton (who I still think is a decent pick in a lackluster year). Lots of questionable picks in there that I don’t see as better than Manning. But that’s the thing about internet lists, isn’t it?
