This time the user isn't somebody from somewhere else with the bad attitude and the horns on his head. David Ortiz is your guy.

It's a sobering time for Red Sox fans. A hurtful time. Big Papi and Manny Ramirez are said to be on the infamous list of 104 major league players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003. The list that was supposed to be kept confidential and destroyed because the tests were done to gauge the scope of usage, not to punish.

Instead, baseball is being subjected to the drip, drip of leaked names. It stopped being "gotcha" reporting after Alex Rodriguez was outed last February. All the names should be released. Any trust between Major League Baseball, its players and its fans has already been damaged.

It's time for baseball to fess up and face up. Otherwise, you're reminded every few months with every new leaked name how baseball sold its soul when the commissioner and the owners looked the other way. Steroids in the clubhouses? No, it's not so.

The dollars rolling through the turnstiles or walking into the corporate suites were more important than credibility.

In a different context, it's what Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis saw coming if he didn't act with swiftness and directness in the Black Sox game-fixing scandal of 1919. The only way to rid baseball of that malignancy was to cut out the cancer.

"Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ballgame ... no player who sits in conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers ... and doesn't promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball again."

That lifetime sentence got attention. Baseball didn't have to endure another World Series dumping.

This spring, Ortiz suggested that any player testing positive should be suspended for a year. In light of Thursday's news you wonder if he was indicating what punishment would serve as a deterrence to himself and others.

There's no hard evidence that Ortiz has been a recent user. Actually, some believe his poor performance this season can be blamed on not using steroids or human growth hormone.

Ortiz wondered if bad eyesight was the reason he couldn't hit the ball well. It may have been his excellent foresight instead. After A-Rod was outed, Ortiz might have worried that he might be next. Talk about a distraction.

It was easy to vilify the arrogant and aloof Barry Bonds. It was easy to go after A-Rod, a hated Yankee.

In Boston, it's easy to detest Manny for his behavior last season, provoking the Sox into shipping him out of town. In Los Angeles, Dodgers fans now know of his steroid use and don't care. Well, it is L.A.

Ortiz, especially, was one of your own. He was the hero of the 2004 postseason and with Manny one of the more feared power-hitting tandems of modern times.

The Minnesota Twins released Ortiz after the 2002 season, the Sox signed him for 2003 and you start connecting the dots. Maybe the change of scenery was the reason his numbers went up. More likely, the performance-enhancing drugs he tested positive for really did work.

The apologists for Ortiz will rally. That, evidenced by the 103 other positive tests, he was abiding by the unwritten rules of the times. Because others were using, he had to use. Whatever personal gains he realized was for the team and by extension, the fans.

No. There has to be a line drawn in the sand between what's acceptable and what's not. What's an even playing field and what's not.

Big Papi earned your trust and affection and then betrayed you. Maybe he's been clean since 2003, but there's less reason to believe that. Maybe he is part of that group that does want to re-establish the game's integrity. Then he and the rank and file of major league baseball should work to release all the names on the list and rebuild baseball.

Before Thursday, Big Papi had a legacy. Today he's the newest member...