It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town

[Editor’s Note: We’ve been told by someone we respect that our previous headline (“More on Dan Shaughnessy’s Papi Smear”) was offensive, and so we have changed it. Your recriminations go here.]

Well this is an excellent rumpus Red Sox stalwart David Ortiz and the Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy are having, no? In case you’ve been snowed under by more trivial matters, it started with this piece by Ortiz on Derek Jeter’s website The Players’ Tribune. Most notable, at least in local media terms, was this passage:

In 2013, I came off the DL and started hot. My first 20 games I was hitting like .400. And the reporter with the red jheri curl from The Boston Globe comes into the locker room says, “You’re from the Dominican. You’re older. You fit the profile of a steroid user. Don’t you think you’re a prime suspect?”

He’s saying this with a straight face. I had taken like 70 at-bats. Anybody can get hot and hit .400 with 70 at-bats. I was stunned. I’m like, I’m Dominican? I fit the profile? Are you kidding me?

I wanted to kill this guy. But you can’t react. That’s what they want. They want you to get angry so they can bury you. So I just smiled at him and asked for his address.

“Why do you want my address?” he said.

“Because I just got tested two days ago.” I said. “I’ll mail you the f****ing results.”

(Shaughnessy dismantles Ortiz’ claims in his column today.)

But there’s also this sidebar, via FishbowlNY: “There’s an interesting collateral detail in Richard Sandomir’s NYT look at The Players’ Tribune’s rookie year. When March 26 essay ‘The Dirt‘ was added to the Derek Jeter portal by editor-at-large David Ortiz, it hit the Red Sox paper of record in the gut.”

From Sandomir’s piece:

Within a half-hour of Ortiz’s post being published on The Players’ Tribune on Thursday night, The Boston Globe rushed onto its website a similar article, the product of an interview Ortiz gave March 11 to one of its reporters, Bob Hohler. That piece had been held since last week so it could be the centerpiece of The Globe’s Major League Baseball preview April 5.

“When he filed it, we were wary,” said Joseph Sullivan, the Globe’s sports editor. “I worried about ESPN or Yahoo or The Boston Herald somehow doing a similar story. But I didn’t think about The Players’ Tribune.”

Sullivan added: “Last night was not a good night for me.”

Then again, this morning wasn’t so great for Ortiz.