…the haters out there want to tarnish our ring. It creates an endless cycle of diminishment: Paul O’Neill retired before testing – and Jeter looks a little thinner these days BAM – diminish late 90s Yankees. Luis Gonzalez? BAM diminish 2001 D-Backs, and on and on and on.

There is no defense when people make you guilty until innocent and seriously, Brad Fullmer? uh… Ben Weber in independent ball suddenly throwing 96 MPH? hmmm… Donnelly named in the Mitchell report because the pine tar was not good enough? (you will notice the absence of guys in their mid-30s in independent ball making ht jump to the big leagues like they did at the turn of the century… hmmmm… wonder why?). And to argue against the accusers is to argue innocence from a position of guilt.

All you can do is tell them they are petty, and why are they jealous of our one flag instead of the 2 this decade by the Roid Sox? or the suspicious Yankee years … feed them their own medicine, it is the only way to debate this.

We beat Bonds and a whole team of roiders with no-juicers like Kennedy, Erstad, Eckstein, Salmon and Lackey. No matter what you can say about some of the guys, diminishing 2002 is an announcement by the person doing the hating that they just don’t believe that good triumphs over evil.