Steroids’ shadow is AP story of year
Alex Rodriguez joined the list of cheaters this year, and Manny Ramirez and David “Big Papi” Ortiz are forever tainted now, too.
Five years after Major League Baseball added punishments to its testing program, questions about performance-enhancing drugs still swirl around America’s favorite pastime. The sport’s ongoing drug problem was chosen as the 2009 Story of the Year by members of The Associated Press, outmuscling even the shocking downfall of Tiger Woods.
“The impact that that story had made it the story of the year,” said Lance Hanlin, sports editor of the Beaufort (S.C.) Gazette and The (Hilton Head) Island Packet. “It was a big, ongoing, overall story.”
The Woods scandal finished fifth in the top story voting. Jimmie Johnson’s unprecedented fourth consecutive NASCAR championship was second, followed by Roger Federer winning his 15th Grand Slam and Brett Favre ending his (second) retirement to lead the Minnesota Vikings to the division title.
This year’s balloting was unusual in that a major story – Woods’ accident Nov. 27 and the salacious revelations that followed – happened after voting had started.
By then, 37 of 161 ballots had been submitted by editors at U.S. newspapers which are members of the AP. The voters were asked to rank the top 10 sports stories of the year, with the first-place story getting 10 points, the second-place story getting nine points, and so on.
Given the extraordinary nature of the Woods story, the AP added it to the top stories ballot Nov. 30 and gave editors who had voted before that the chance to submit a new ballot, which about 10 did.
