The real issue behind the Raul Ibanez story

When the Philadelphia Phillies came to town May 19-21 to battle the Redlegs one player stood out to me more than Utley, Howard or Rollins. That player was Raul Ibanez.

And I'm not just saying that.

In that series Ibanez was 3-12, hit two homeruns, doubled twice, drove in five and scored at least one run in every game during that series.

My knowledge of Ibanez to that point was reasonably limited as he has spent much of his career in the American League and, generally speaking, I refuse to acknowledge the AL as real baseball.

Of course I'm kidding. Mostly.

But, my point is that I'd certainly heard of Ibanez and knew he him to be a solid outfielder, but to say I followed his career with any regularity would be misleading. Even after the Phils blew threw the Queen City, taking two of three, I didn't think much of Ibanez other than, "Wow, I'm in no hurry to face that guy again."

I assure you never once did I wonder about his hot start and I certainly never tried to draw any kind of serious connection to Ibanez and steroids.

This, of course, is mostly because I'm an upwardly-mobile, forward-thinking person with a shred of common sense.

This means that I have absolutely nothing in common with Jerod Morris.

Morris, on a blog titled Midwest Sports Fans, crafted a story in which he questioned whether the numbers Ibanez has posted this season point to the use of steroids, or Performance Enhancing Drugs or whatever the hell players take/took, whatever.

In the interest of fairness, the numbers Ibanez has put up thus far have been remarkable. At the age of 37 Ibanez is raking like never before. 20 homeruns, more than 50 RBI, an OPS clear of 1000 andohbytheway, he leads all Major League outfielders in All-Star voting.

Ibanez has always been good; never this good. Prior to this season the most homeruns he has hit in a season has been 33, a feat he accomplished in 2006 while playing for the Seattle Mariners.

These points were the fuel behind the Morris posting in which he made a half-hearted effort to compare the playing situation for Ibanez this year and in past years. Eventually concluding the playing situation for Ibanez this year and in past seasons is virtually the same, thus it's fair to surmise PEDs are the cause of Ibanez's spike in numbers; the link to Morris' blog can be found at the top of the page.

Of course, Ibanez came out and blasted the blog like a four-seamer left middle-in.

"I'll come after people who defame or slander me," Ibanez told the Philadelphia Inquirer Tuesday night. "It's pathetic and disgusting. There should be some accountability for people who put that out there."

"I'll put that up against the jobs of anyone who writes this stuff," Ibanez went on, according to the report. "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."

While I totally agree with everything Ibanez said, I do take some offense to his final point.

I'm not 42, and I don't live in my mom's basement. I'm 22 and live off my girlfriends couch.

There is a HUGE difference!

But, this brings us to my real issue with the whole situation. There are countless people out there just like me and Jerod Morris.

We love sports, care about our teams and want to be sportswriters more than anything else in the whole world. Some of us went and got journalism degrees and then realized there is absolutely no future in traditional newspaper sportswriting.

So, we post to blogs, Facebook and Myspace. All the time. We plug our writing to our family, friends, pets and panhandlers all with the faint hope that maybe one day we'll get noticed, one day realize our dreams.

This requires us to be somewhat edgy. After all, if we're boring no one will want to read our stuff.

For me, "edgy" means the occasional comical reference to human feces and casual sex--though not necessarily at the same time.

Apparently for Jerod Morris "edgy" means defaming an All-Star outfielder enjoying a career year.

One of my favorite radio personalities, Colin Cowherd, defended this blog yesterday on his show claiming that fans and the media have the right, especially in this era, to question bloated offensive numbers.

Maybe.

But I would contend, fervently, this "questioning" should take place responsibly and with more proof than, "Hmm. Ibanez has never hit this many homeruns before the All-Star break in his entire career."

This thing isn't even about Raul Ibanez, he's just an innocent bystander.

Rather, it's about Jerod Morris trying to draw attention to his writing by publishing something a little bit controversial, and that's what pisses me off more than anything else.

Without considering the ramifications of what he was saying Morris published this piece (of garbage!) in the hope he would cause some kind of stir.

Mission accomplished, dishrag.

Look, I have no real rooting interest in the Raul Ibanez story. I hope he's clean simply because baseball's reputation has been tarnished enough and I love the game far too much to see it take another black eye.

But, the fact of the matter is, if he did take steroids I'd just chalk him up to the laundry list of other players who did the exact same thing.

Oh, and let's not forget that much of this rampant steroid use took place during a time in which baseball was borderline irrelevant, virtually no one was coming to the ballpark and people were still bitter about the strike.

Naturally, no one cared about steroids then; the game was entertaining.

Don't even get me started.

If there was any tangible proof at all that Raul Ibanez used steroids then Morris would have been justified in writing what he did. The sad fact of the matter is that no such proof exists and the only reason we're even having this stupid conversation is because an aspiring sportswriter wanted to get noticed.

I just hope he finished before his shift at Burger King started.