Did you know, David Ortiz, aka Big Papi, was one of 104 major league players cited for using performance enhancing drugs and ESPN's two big-gun announcers, Dave Phillips and Tim Kirchen, turn away from this as if this can't hurt baseball?

It has already hurt baseball and will continue to hurt until baseball makes an about face, fesses up to the incompetency of its leader, Bud Selig, and gets rid of him.

Ortiz is not just guilty of using drugs but of lying about it clear back in 2003. Just like A-Rod, isn't it?

I say neither of these two people, Plus Manny Rameriz and all of those other 104 MLB players who used drugs, should be nominated for the Hall of Fame. Fair is fair!

Phillips and Kirchen have lost their credibility with fans -- they don't even believe their records should contain astericks or that they should suffer any penalty at all. Then what about what baseball did to Pete Rose who was caught betting on games? There's more than one way to cheat. Even our kids know that cheating is cheating. You can't have one rule for Rose and another for homerun hitters.

They cheated. They all lied about it. Baseball teaches kids that "cheaters never win." Well, Mr. Bud Selig, what are you teaching these kids now?

You, Bud Selig, are responsible for the game of baseball and you have let us fans down, especially the kids.

Now in the glare of a drug scandal revealed, we see the decline of Big Papi with wood in his hands. This year he has a .224 batting average and, even more glaring, no home runs in 116 at-bats from the most feared left-handed power hitter Boston has seen since Mo Vaughn and Carl Yastrzemski.

There was a day not too long ago when Ortiz used to make excitement -- quickly, effortlessly, each new pop coming on cue, loud, distinct, expected. No player in the team's history had arrived so anonymously -- he became a regular with the Red Sox midway through 2003 -- "nor wrote for himself such a legend by becoming the definitive pressure player of his time."

When we lived in Minneapolis for eight years, we watched Ortiz, who was the Twin's first baseman and nothing too special. His baseball magic and bat pop arrived after he was traded to the Red Sox and suddenly he caught fire. Why? Because it was about then that he and Manny Rameriz started bumming around together. Remember how sportscasters talked about the great "chemistry" in the Boston dugout? It was supposed to have been that chemistry that made the difference in 2004 and 2007 when Boston won the World Series. Now in the minds of all baseball fans, even those records and honors have been brought into question.

The real chemistry in the Boston dugout was performance enhancing drugs.

Manny was the team's leading hitter and he taught Ortiz more than how to become a big-time hitter, he taught him how to juice it up.

Ortiz became so proficient at producing big-boom, big-moment offense that it did not seem possible that one day it could ever stop, that one day he would come to the plate and be anything but a hero.

Each year, the Red Sox's media guide has listed his greatest hits, the number of foes he has vanquished when all appeared lost.

Now, in the waning months of Big Papi's on-again, off-again career, fans across America wonder why Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig has been allowed to make such a mess of baseball for so long for the fans.

Oh, Selig did a great job when it comes to allowing the millionaire dollars to open up in favor of players and against the fans. Fans don't come out as much in certain ball parks anymore because to get in you need a fifty-dollar bill for a "cheap seat." For a family, a night at the major league ballpark has become passe, unpopular, unaffordable.

Why can't Bud Selig see the facts of what he has turned baseball into and quit while he still has some dignity?

Let someone else take the reigns. Americans care about baseball. Selig, obviously, did not care when he allowed this drug thing to burst out of proportion and continue without tests and tough regulations long after he knew about it.

It's time for a change, time for someone smarter and tougher to stand up against the now powerful player's union, the agents and the owners -- time for someone with less baggage than Selig to take charge.

If enough true baseball fans booed him each time he appeared at a game, he would soon get the message. Let's not allow him to hang around on his terms until 2012, his announced retirement date.