The Sports Guy's latest article bemoaning the supposed fall from grace of the Sox is more than a bit naive. He notes the rise in play of guys like Johnny Damon and Big Papi but was this really a revelation? Did he really just notice these improvements? Was it really just right now that he started to consider that something more than synergy and the power of the Red Sox Nation might have helped these guys improve? Also, did he not realize that the Red Sox had been losing for years with cheaters? It's not like the team just discovered performance enhancing drugs existed in the 2003 offseason.

While it did feel nice to hold our heads high and act like we did it the old fashioned way, I think most people, including myself, knew that there was more than a little self-delusion going on there. Did people really think the Sox or any team was/is void of any players on the juice? Hell, two of the most prominent and beloved Sox pre-2004 were Mo Vaughn and Nomar Garciaparra, both have been linked to performance enhancing drugs. The Sox are in the same boat as pretty much every recent World Series winning team. Yeah it sucks but I don't think it's nearly as damning as Spygate. Hell, even the Tuck Rule was more BS than this.

And if there was ever a case of someone not learning his lesson, Simmons' discussions begins and ends with the players from 2004 who are gone or, in Papi's case, on the decline. If we're going to look sideways at Big Papi then why aren't we also wondering about little Dustin? Mike Lowell went from throw-in to MVP; shouldn't we start to question that? This is life in The Steroids Era. It's how it's always been. Just until now, Red Sox fans have been able to lie to themselves because nobody close to the current team had been caught red handed like this. (Granted, some people could argue, as my friend Morgan did, that Manny failed the test because Joe Torre just taught him The Yankee Way).

Honestly, I'm just happy that the Sports Guy didn't cook up some crazy conspiracy theory to blame Theo for introducing steroid to the Sox.