Because I know you wrote on Derek Jeter’s website [The Players’ Tribune] last year that some people will always look at you as a cheater because of that one report. That was a list of players who were said to have tested positive, although the players’ association and MLB agreed that not all were considered positives. We still don’t know what substance the players were on that list for, including you.

Uh-huh.

What can you do to convince people, David?

I don’t think I can do anything. A noise comes out, and do you think I’m just going to sit down and believe what somebody I don’t know comes off saying? That came out [in] 2009, [but it was] about 2003. [MLB’s] drug policies started in 2004. I never failed a test. I kept on banging. So, you know, the reality is that it’s a noise that I think was more damaging [to some players’ careers] than anything else, because a lot of guys that were pronounced [as having tested] positive for things or having been caught using things, their careers went away. Yet I am [here]. Let me tell you, there’s not one player in baseball, not one player, that has been drug-tested more than David Ortiz. I guarantee you that. I never failed a test.

Walter Iooss Jr./SI

Let me ask you this, then, because you mentioned all the other players who did [use]. Back in the day when there was no policy, there was no testing for steroids, why wouldn’t you use steroids, knowing that there were other guys you were competing against who were using them? You could see what was happening in the game.

Yeah.

Why wouldn’t you use them?

Because there’s one thing that I have been afraid of my whole life: chemicals. I don’t like to put chemicals in my body. I’m a happy person. I’m a person that believes in nature. I’m a person that believes in secondary effects when you start using things that you are not supposed to.

And it was something that never came to my attention. Yes, I used to go to GNC and buy supplements like everybody else. I mean, I’m an athlete. I’m a high-performing athlete. So it was legal to go to GNC. [Now] I don’t even know where GNC is, since they told us not to go to GNC to buy any supplement. Now we get [information] from our trainers so you don’t get caught in any kind of trouble.

Certified.

Exactly. But it was pretty normal for everybody to go to GNC and buy supplements, just like any other athlete. So that’s the reason why I’m not going to sit down and have people pointing fingers at me, because I didn’t go to GNC back in those days to buy steroids. So whatever comes up, or the way these people came out saying that I tested positive for whatever—something that they don’t even know—I don’t feel guilty, because I didn’t go to no place to buy steroids from anybody, because that’s not me.