I'm not at all surprised but I have the same problem with this story as I did when the information about A-Rod was made public. This information is supposed to be sealed by court order. Anybody who has seen it has no right to talk about it. And since they are talking about it anonymously - they could be disbarred if they did not - there's no way to know if this information is truthful or not (or if the reporter is just making this up, for that matter.)
The other problem I have with this is that the union agreed to do these tests under the explicit condition that the names of the players would not be made public, and that there would be no fines or suspensions against those that did test positive. The tests were to be used to conduct a study to figure out what percentage of players were using, and nothing more. To hold a player or team responsible now is ex post facto, declaring him guilty of something that was not illegal at that time; it's also using "evidence" that was agreed upon by both sides that would not be used against any of the players.
One last problem I have is the selective nature of making these names public. Why only Ortiz, Ramirez, Rodriguez and a handful of others when there were over 100 players that tested positive? If you are going to name names - which, as I stated above is absolutely the wrong thing to do - then either name them all or don't name any. I don't agree that the Times was right to reveal Rodriguez's name when they did, and I don't agree with their decision to run this column either.
