ESPN jumps into local fray with website

Yesterday, a well-known but unexpected player entered the fray. And did it ever land an important piece.

ESPNBoston intends to closely follow the blueprint of ESPNChicago, emphasizing its deep reservoir of ESPN-produced content while also utilizing aggregation and links to other sites in an effort to become the destination site for local sports.

Like the Chicago site, ESPNBoston will emphasize logical, symbiotic affiliations and integrations with various branches of its own brand. It will feature a brief daily “SportsCenter’’ regional highlight package as well as a partnership with the local ESPN Radio affiliate. Currently, ESPNBoston does not have a website, instead redirecting to ESPN Radio 890-AM’s site.

The appearance of the ESPNChicago website is certainly familiar: it is virtually identical to the ESPN mother ship’s home page, except, of course, that all of the content is localized, including all of the news links down the righthand column.

Among the national ESPN personalities who have contributed at ESPNChicago are columnists Gene Wojciechowski (a former Tribune sportswriter) and Chicago native Scoop Jackson. ESPN has a roster of columnists and contributors with significant Boston ties, including Bill Simmons, who writes the popular “Sports Guy’’ column and also hosts an entertaining podcast, baseball guru Peter Gammons, and NFL analyst Michael Smith.

ESPN confirmed that Simmons, Gammons, and Smith will contribute to ESPNBoston, though much if not all of their work is expected to be repurposed from ESPN’s main site.

Nonetheless, their contributions will be a tremendous asset. As one source at a competing Boston sports website put it, “If they come up with a creative way to spin Simmons’s and Gammons’s traffic as part of their site here, their numbers are going to be insane.’’

ESPN announced July 20 that it planned to follow its successful debut in Chicago by launching city-specific sites in Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York. ESPNDallas.com is expected to launch within the next couple of weeks, to coincide with the Dallas Cowboys’ opener.

ESPNLosAngeles and ESPNNewYork are slated for early next year, and other cities that already have ESPN Radio affiliates are likely destinations. According to sources with knowledge of the situation, ESPN is intent on expanding into virtually every major media market, with the possibility of regional branches down the road.

Eyebrows were certainly raised in Boston when the sports-mad region, home to six professional championship teams this decade, wasn’t listed among ESPN’s second wave of localized sites. After yesterday’s developments, perhaps the initial absence was part of the plan.

“We started hearing [ESPNBoston’s arrival] was a possibility weeks ago,’’ said a source at a competing local sports website. “But it certainly does seem to have been a clandestine operation.’’

Until yesterday, that is, when the local sports media’s seemingly never-ending game of musical chairs saw Reiss switch seats.

“Everyone is scrambling right now to position themselves in the best way possible,’’ a source from a competing website mused. “Only time will tell what the best situations actually are.’’

Chad Finn can be reached at finn@globe.com

Chad Finn Touching All the Bases

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

David Ortiz Boston Red Sox

They count. For all the instant disillusionment and partisan morality, the Red Sox’ championships of 2004 and 2007 still stand.

What we saw in October 2004 — the eight straight victories by the Red Sox over the Yankees and the Cardinals — remains an epic run.

Johnny Damon really did stand up in the Sox clubhouse on the night they fell three games behind the Yankees and assert that his team was quite capable of winning four games in a row. Which it promptly did. Twice.

This history is worth recalling because the Red Sox are coming to Yankeeland for a four-game series, Thursday through Sunday. No doubt Yankee fans will remind current Sox players and their fans of the tests from 2003 that detected the use of performance-enhancing drugs by David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez.

The results for Ortiz and Ramirez, which were part of what was supposed to be anonymous research into the extent of drug use, were first reported by The New York Times on Thursday.

Yankee fans will conveniently omit the fact that Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, Jason Giambi and even good old Andy Pettitte have been connected to illegal stuff in recent years.

It is unfortunate that baseball — management and union — contrived to duck serious testing until finally forced by Congress and unavoidable evidence. Penalties came only later.

We all have to live with that. There is no going back, no asterisks. Barry Bonds hit his home runs with that magnificent short stroke of his, and, no doubt in my mind, enhancement from Balco. There are shadows over Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, but their home runs count.

Fans should think what they want, but unofficial tests do not count. The same is true in cycling, which avoided credible testing for many years in the face of blatant cheating. But incomplete research tests from 1999 that suggested Lance Armstrong had used EPO for blood doping are meaningless. I believe journalists should reveal details like this when they can be verified, but the Ortiz and Ramirez tests from 2003 do not count.

Three things I know about sports and drugs.

One is that anabolic steroids and EPO are banned from almost all sports, for good reason. Young athletes have committed suicide from the effects of steroids; cyclists have fallen off their bikes quite dead because their altered blood was like sludge. That’s why certain substances are banned. Fans who blithely say they have no problem with sports doping are volunteering to be accessories to death.

Another thing I know is that athletes are almost always aware of what they are putting in their bodies. They may not be able to name one judge on the highest court in their land, or know the words of their national anthem, but they know the ingredients they are ingesting or injecting. It is their life, their livelihood. So I never believe it when athletes say their trainer or their buddy just handed them some stuff. Please.

The third thing I know is that sports fans have to give up this false expectation that athletes should demonstrate higher standards than politicians, bankers, mortgage executives or, for that matter, journalists. Stop expecting athletes to be role models. Caveat emptor.

Athletes can be as overpriced as the soggy and salty $13.25 processed pork sandwich I foolishly purchased at Throneberry Field Forever in Flushing the other night. The real question is, why do people pay outrageous prices for dreck, on the field and in the concession stands?

Still, sports can be a pretty good show. I am not downgrading the derring-do of Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, both of whom I assume to be clean, nor am I erasing the memories of lumbering Papi and mystical Manny, back to back, making Boston the dominant team of this century, so far. It still counts.

In recent years, Ortiz has been the subject of many e-mail messages I have received from self-appointed physiognomists, phrenologists and physiologists, claiming that any fool could see Papi was doping. Just look at the bones in his face. The change in his body. The clutch home runs he was swatting. My response was, Got proof?

The floating suspicion about Ortiz has caused some readers to point out that The New York Times owns the Boston Globe as well as 17.75 percent of New England Sports Ventures, which owns the Red Sox and 80 percent of the New England Sports Network. This tangle of interests could lead The Times to cover up evidence of doping by Red Sox players, readers have said.

One could tell readers that there has never been the slightest pressure to go easy on the Sox and that no matter how hard some of us criticize the Yankees, I have never once heard a Yankees official claim it was motivated by corporate interests. Fortunately, The Times says it is selling its share of the Sox by January, and not a moment too soon.

For now, the news is out that Papi and Manny were part of a dirty generation. I do not have much nostalgia for the singular home-run exploits by sluggers of the past age, but the collective success of the Sox in Fenway Park and elsewhere was dramatic and historic. Just guessing Yankees fans won’t see it that way.