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A report released Thursday has shocked the whole baseball world, but most especially the city of Boston. It reveals that the two sluggers primarily responsible for the Boston Red Sox’s astonishing 2004 World Series win tested positive for steroids in 2003.

The report states that David Ortiz and former Red Sox team mate Manny Ramirez were among 104 Major League baseball players who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003. The performances of the two players were the biggest reasons that the Boston Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, breaking their 86 year World Series drought, scoring an improbable playoff victory against their nemesis the New York Yankees along the way.

The news that the two were indeed known to be steroid users now seems to cast a shadow over that spectacular series, much as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s steroid use, and the allegations that Barry Bonds used them as well, puts an asterisk over their home run records.

Those who tested positive for performance enhancing substances in 2003 were not penalized in any way. It was not until 2005 that suspensions were handed down for such offences.  But contrary to what those whose names appear on the list were told would happen the, it was never destroyed.

The news that Manny Ramirez tested positive in 2003 is no big surprise to anybody, especially since he has just come back from a 50 game suspension he was given this year for failing a random drug test, something that all MLB players are now subject to.

The surprise is that Big Papi appears on that list. David Ortiz has always appeared to be the good guy as opposed to the bad boy image that Ramirez has always had, even as a rookie with the Cleveland Indians. Die hard Boston fans are in shock. Just a few months ago, just after his former team mate began his long enforced hiatus from the game, Big Papi gave an interview to local reporters in which he gave an opinion that steroid abusers should be banned for at least a year, a statement that seems rather stupid and hypocritical in the face of Thursday’s news. When faced by the same reporters for a statement about the news that he tested positive for those very substances in the past Ortiz  had no comment.

There are now a growing number of people, from both within baseball and outside it, who want all 104 names that appear on the 2003 list revealed, so that it is just not big names like Ortiz and Ramirez taking the heat for what so many others have done. It seems unlikely that the full list will be revealed though, at least not officially. One name is known  however not to be on the list; that of Roger Clemmons, who has taken a terrible beating in the press over the last few years over his own alleged steroid use and who was even called to Congress to testify about the problem that is plaguing America’s national pastime.