Damon mentioned himself, Schilling, Derek Lowe and Pedro Martinez as other important contributors to the Red Sox then, but he seemed interested to know just how many of his teammates were doping. The more names, he suggested, the less weight the championship carries.

Image The top of the Red Sox 2004 World Series Championship ring. Credit... Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters

History may be kinder, and may side more with Schilling, who played in two other World Series, for the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies and the 2001 champion Arizona Diamondbacks. Both rosters were also dotted with steroid suspects.

Some have doubted the validity of the Yankees teams that included Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Chuck Knoblauch and Jason Grimsley, who appeared in the 2007 report by George J. Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, on steroids in baseball. The report named few players on the Red Sox, a team for which Mitchell is a paid adviser to the ownership group. (The New York Times Company is a minority owner of the team.)

But Mitchell’s report was not meant to be comprehensive, and he stated in it that players from all teams were found to have used drugs. Among his primary sources were Kirk Radomski and Brian McNamee, both based in New York.

“Common sense tells us every team in baseball had steroid users during that era,” said Bob Costas, who was here to broadcast the Thursday night Yankees-White Sox game for MLB Network. “Those that appeared in the Mitchell report by and large came from teams and circumstances where Mitchell and his staff had sources, and they didn’t have equal sources in every big-league city.”

Costas continued: “Texas didn’t win anything during that period of time, and it’s pretty clear that Texas might have led the league in massive steroid use. So I don’t know how you evaluate or devalue championships during that period of time.”

The players on Thursday seemed weary of the issue, the way it continues to monopolize attention whenever a new name is revealed. Yankees Manager Joe Girardi, who won three championships as a catcher for the team, compared it to a Band-Aid slowly peeling off the skin.