{"id":16618,"date":"2016-02-24T09:03:58","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T17:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/nationals-zimmerman-defends-himself-against-ped-allegations\/"},"modified":"2016-02-24T09:03:58","modified_gmt":"2016-02-24T17:03:58","slug":"nationals-zimmerman-defends-himself-against-ped-allegations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/nationals-zimmerman-defends-himself-against-ped-allegations\/","title":{"rendered":"Nationals’ Zimmerman defends himself against PED allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"

VIERA, Fla. <\/strong>\u2014 Even after a decade in the majors, Ryan Zimmerman knows that one report saying he took performance-enhancing drugs could tarnish his reputation.<\/p>\n

So he\u2019s fighting to clear his name after Al-Jazeera America aired a documentary in late December that implicated the Washington Nationals\u2019 starting first baseman.<\/p>\n

In January, he and Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard filed defamation suits against the network, and on Tuesday Zimmerman vigorously defended himself against the claims made in \u201cThe Dark Side: Secrets of Sports Doping.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zimmerman \u2014 who said his emotions have ranged from shock, anger and frustration \u2014 believes trainer Jason Riley is how his name got linked to pharmacist Charles Sly, who was featured in the documentary. Sly recanted his statements about Zimmerman, Howard and Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning taking human growth hormone before the documentary aired.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never met that guy, I\u2019ve never heard of that guy,\u201d Zimmerman said of Sly. \u201cNone of that stuff is true. I\u2019ve never done any of that. I\u2019ve never even thought about doing any of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The organization\u2019s longest tenured player said he was willing to open up his entire life, including phone and email records, to discovery as part of the defamation suit. Even though Zimmerman acknowledged it\u2019s difficult for public figures to successfully sue for defamation, he felt it was his responsibility to go through the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe if this stops this from happening to just one person after me, then it\u2019s worth it,\u201d Zimmerman said.<\/p>\n

Zimmerman and Howard filed suits in U.S. District Court in Washington Jan. 5 against Al-Jazeera America. The 31-year-old said his ability to afford to file for defamation and the statement it made about his life and career made doing so an easy decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cOpening myself up to everything that filing a suit opens you up to, I don\u2019t really think there\u2019s much of a stronger I guess action for me to take than saying: \u2018Here you go. Come look at me legally,\u2019\u201d Zimmerman said. \u201cA lot of people have said certain things when they\u2019re accused of these but have never taken these actions, so by taking these actions I\u2019m basically letting them into all aspects of my life. … I\u2019m willing to take to show people that I have nothing to hide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zimmerman is going into his 11th full major league season. He\u2019s a .283 career hitter with 200 home runs and 783 runs batted in.<\/p>\n

The documentary added Zimmerman and Howard to the long list of baseball players who allegedly have taken performance-enhancing drugs. Across the state in Clearwater, Howard said the documentary came as a surprise and denied the statements made in it.<\/p>\n

Zimmerman said he\u2019s in favor of continued investigations as long as they\u2019re not reckless.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need investigations because I\u2019m one of the biggest advocates for getting things out of sports,\u201d Zimmerman said. \u201cI think people need to be a little bit careful before they just start throwing peoples\u2019 names out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zimmerman wanted so badly to talk to Dusty Baker about the situation that he followed his new manager into his office from the parking lot Tuesday morning. Baker could hear the \u201churt\u201d in Zimmerman\u2019s voice about the allegations.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe explained it to me, which he didn\u2019t really have to,\u201d Baker said. \u201cBut he wanted me to know what was going on and how sad and kind of angry but embarrassed (he was) about the whole situation because he\u2019s a guy that really cares about kids and about other people and how they think of him and the influences that he may have on young people. He\u2019ll be exonerated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zimmerman, whose goal for 2016 is to stay healthy after injuries limited him to just 156 games combined over the past two seasons, understands that filing for defamation could make the road to exoneration a long one. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s his hope that surrendering his privacy for the suit sends a statement about his innocence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really know a stronger way to express myself,\u201d Zimmerman said. \u201cI don\u2019t think there is a stronger way to express myself in this country than that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VIERA, Fla. \u2014 Even after a decade in the majors, Ryan Zimmerman knows that one report saying he took performance-enhancing drugs could tarnish his reputation. So he\u2019s fighting to clear his name after Al-Jazeera America aired a documentary in late December that implicated the Washington Nationals\u2019 starting first baseman. In January, he and Philadelphia Phillies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16618"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}