PonyExpress
In the Starting Line-Up
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2006
- Messages
- 4,659
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- 78
Ted Johnson is clearly suffering and deserves our sympathy. I wish him and his family the best and I hope he receives all the help he needs to become a productive citizen again, a man at peace with himself. As Pats fans we owe him a debt of gratitude for his on-field exploits. But his story demands more scrutiny than is offered by articles in the NY Times or its satellite the Boston Globe.
In the NYTimes, Ted Johnson admits he continues to conceal from his doctors an amphetamine addiction that began in 2003. Would the knowledge of such an addiction, or other drug addictions, change their diagnosis, considering the Times reports there is no evidence of brain injury on MRI or CT scan?
In November 2006, Johnson announced on Felger’s radio show that he was eager to return to the Pats, and waiting for a phone call. During that interview, Mike remarked at least twice that Johnson had lost a lot of weight, and questioned his fitness to play football. In the NYTimes, Johnson admits his addiction began in 2003 when he was given amphetamines illegally by a “friend” who also supplied them to “major league baseball players”. Such an illegal supplier fits the profile of “personal trainers” known to have distributed steroids in major league baseball. Johnson has long been suspected of steroid abuse, his physique and characteristic injuries the anecdotal evidence. Johnson’s current self-described symptoms seem identical with those common to steroid withdrawal. Suicidal depression, mood swings, paranoid jealousy, rage, sexual impotence are all tragic symptoms known to have affected athletes such as Ken Caminiti. Caminiti’s natural testosterone level never recovered, and the resulting mental and physical depression drove him to the drug addictions that eventually killed him.
Jackie MacMullen states that her article had been in dry dock for 6 months, awaiting Johnson’s green light for publication. Yet several obvious questions prompted by her story remain unanswered:
a) Is Johnson suffering from steroid withdrawal, and could that coupled with a hidden amphetamine addiction explain his symptoms?
b) Is Johnson’s account credible given his addiction, and his legal, marital, mental, physical and emotional state?
c) Did TJ walk out of camp in 2002 because of concussions, as he now states, or in a contract dispute/personality clash with BB, as was widely suspected at the time?
d) Can all his problems really be pinned on one training camp incident in 2002? Every difficult, complicated question has an answer that is simple, easy to understand and WRONG.
Despite the 6 month window, which presented ample time to investigate these angles, the Times/Globe left them curiously unanswered. Their silence prompts a responsible reader to hypothesize the chain of events that led to the story’s publication…
We know that Johnson remains best friends with Bledsoe, holdovers from the pre-BB years. We know Bledsoe remains close with Borges. It is not a difficult leap to assume that Johnson would have gone to Borges for a sympathetic hearing, as the villain in all their personal fables is the same man, BB. It is easy to understand why Borges did not write the article himself… if he had it would have been exposed for a thinly disguised hatchet job full of more holes than Swiss cheese. Instead, Sullivan referred it to others with more disinterested reputations…In the Globe’s case, the saintly MacMullen, as Bob Ryan and Peter Gammons might describe her, was elected to carry the “Dirty Water”.
I mention Ryan, the dean of the sports department, and Gammons, its most illustrious graduate, because they represent the Globe’s institutional hostility toward the Pats organization. Only this week Bob Ryan went on WFAN, and to a captive audience portrayed the Krafts as delusional paranoids, mocking them for “still counting words” in the Boston Globe to ensure equal coverage, dismissing the Pats, despite their success, as permanent second class citizens on the Boston sports scene, while elsewhere sneering on air at BB’s marital situation; These comments were in tune with the increasingly unbearable Gammons, who on ESPN, in the middle of the Pats playoff run, defensively dismissed the team’s standing in the region compared to the Red Sox. Other than newcomer Mike Reiss, the attitude of the Globe staff, ancient and modern, is remarkably hostile to the Pats organization and the rise of football in the region in general.
On a final note, my gut tells me that this article is the beginning of what will become a more widespread media assault on the morality of the NFL and its physical play. There have been rumblings from a quack doctor for several years trying to drum up attention for potential class action, while the dubious Andre Waters autopsy results, linking his suicide to concussion issues, have been trumpeted as fact since their publication. The issue has been gaining traction in mainstream outlets such ESPN and the Times/Globe. I am willing to bet that another less physical American sport, one that has been raked over the coals in the media for its immorality, one that has been tarnished in the eyes of the public, one whose popularity is on the down-swing, one that looks on jealously as the NFL remains unscathed by criticisms of institutional corruption- I am willing to bet the powers-to-be in that sport would take great pleasure if the NFL suddenly were to receive similar negative attention from fans, media and congress, tit for tat … We know the Times/Globe is a member of the Red Sox ownership group. I only wonder why the Globe’s renowned investigative reporters, with 6 months to spare, never found out to whom Ted Johnson’s “friend” was supplying illegal drugs on the Red Sox 2004 World Series team. I imagine that article is forthcoming.
In the NYTimes, Ted Johnson admits he continues to conceal from his doctors an amphetamine addiction that began in 2003. Would the knowledge of such an addiction, or other drug addictions, change their diagnosis, considering the Times reports there is no evidence of brain injury on MRI or CT scan?
In November 2006, Johnson announced on Felger’s radio show that he was eager to return to the Pats, and waiting for a phone call. During that interview, Mike remarked at least twice that Johnson had lost a lot of weight, and questioned his fitness to play football. In the NYTimes, Johnson admits his addiction began in 2003 when he was given amphetamines illegally by a “friend” who also supplied them to “major league baseball players”. Such an illegal supplier fits the profile of “personal trainers” known to have distributed steroids in major league baseball. Johnson has long been suspected of steroid abuse, his physique and characteristic injuries the anecdotal evidence. Johnson’s current self-described symptoms seem identical with those common to steroid withdrawal. Suicidal depression, mood swings, paranoid jealousy, rage, sexual impotence are all tragic symptoms known to have affected athletes such as Ken Caminiti. Caminiti’s natural testosterone level never recovered, and the resulting mental and physical depression drove him to the drug addictions that eventually killed him.
Jackie MacMullen states that her article had been in dry dock for 6 months, awaiting Johnson’s green light for publication. Yet several obvious questions prompted by her story remain unanswered:
a) Is Johnson suffering from steroid withdrawal, and could that coupled with a hidden amphetamine addiction explain his symptoms?
b) Is Johnson’s account credible given his addiction, and his legal, marital, mental, physical and emotional state?
c) Did TJ walk out of camp in 2002 because of concussions, as he now states, or in a contract dispute/personality clash with BB, as was widely suspected at the time?
d) Can all his problems really be pinned on one training camp incident in 2002? Every difficult, complicated question has an answer that is simple, easy to understand and WRONG.
Despite the 6 month window, which presented ample time to investigate these angles, the Times/Globe left them curiously unanswered. Their silence prompts a responsible reader to hypothesize the chain of events that led to the story’s publication…
We know that Johnson remains best friends with Bledsoe, holdovers from the pre-BB years. We know Bledsoe remains close with Borges. It is not a difficult leap to assume that Johnson would have gone to Borges for a sympathetic hearing, as the villain in all their personal fables is the same man, BB. It is easy to understand why Borges did not write the article himself… if he had it would have been exposed for a thinly disguised hatchet job full of more holes than Swiss cheese. Instead, Sullivan referred it to others with more disinterested reputations…In the Globe’s case, the saintly MacMullen, as Bob Ryan and Peter Gammons might describe her, was elected to carry the “Dirty Water”.
I mention Ryan, the dean of the sports department, and Gammons, its most illustrious graduate, because they represent the Globe’s institutional hostility toward the Pats organization. Only this week Bob Ryan went on WFAN, and to a captive audience portrayed the Krafts as delusional paranoids, mocking them for “still counting words” in the Boston Globe to ensure equal coverage, dismissing the Pats, despite their success, as permanent second class citizens on the Boston sports scene, while elsewhere sneering on air at BB’s marital situation; These comments were in tune with the increasingly unbearable Gammons, who on ESPN, in the middle of the Pats playoff run, defensively dismissed the team’s standing in the region compared to the Red Sox. Other than newcomer Mike Reiss, the attitude of the Globe staff, ancient and modern, is remarkably hostile to the Pats organization and the rise of football in the region in general.
On a final note, my gut tells me that this article is the beginning of what will become a more widespread media assault on the morality of the NFL and its physical play. There have been rumblings from a quack doctor for several years trying to drum up attention for potential class action, while the dubious Andre Waters autopsy results, linking his suicide to concussion issues, have been trumpeted as fact since their publication. The issue has been gaining traction in mainstream outlets such ESPN and the Times/Globe. I am willing to bet that another less physical American sport, one that has been raked over the coals in the media for its immorality, one that has been tarnished in the eyes of the public, one whose popularity is on the down-swing, one that looks on jealously as the NFL remains unscathed by criticisms of institutional corruption- I am willing to bet the powers-to-be in that sport would take great pleasure if the NFL suddenly were to receive similar negative attention from fans, media and congress, tit for tat … We know the Times/Globe is a member of the Red Sox ownership group. I only wonder why the Globe’s renowned investigative reporters, with 6 months to spare, never found out to whom Ted Johnson’s “friend” was supplying illegal drugs on the Red Sox 2004 World Series team. I imagine that article is forthcoming.
