A columnist’s job is to be provocative and ask tough questions. Dan Shaughnessy did that and more with a column last week on David Ortiz.

The Boston Globe columnist brought up the question of whether Ortiz’s hot start, which occurred without the benefit of spring training, was due to the hitter getting some extra assistance.

Shaughnessy wrote:

Hitting is not this easy. Athletes do not get better as they mature into their late 30s. Baseball has been peppered with performance-enhancing drugs for the last 20 years. The cheaters are always ahead of the testers. A number of players from the Dominican Republic have tested positive for steroids. Injuries to the Achilles’ tendon are consistent with steroid use. It is not natural for a guy to hit .426 out of the gate without the benefit of any spring training.

So David Ortiz knows. He knows he is a suspect. He knows there are people out there who think he’s cheating. His name appeared on a list of players who tested positive for PEDs in 2003. And what he is doing now just doesn’t look possible.

To his credit, Shaugnessy talked directly to Ortiz, who denied everything:

What it is like to be suspected?

“I don’t think I have been,” he said. “Nobody comes to me and tells me, ‘They suspect you are using steroids.’ ’’

But you fit all the models. You are from the Dominican Republic. You are an older player. Older players don’t get better. You’ve had injuries consistent with steroid use. You showed up on the list from 2003. You fit all the formulas.

“[Expletive], I’m a human being just like everyone else,” said Ortiz. “You can get worse or you can get better. One or the other.’’

Not surprisingly, the fallout went into the weekend. Alex Speier of WEEI.com wrote about this lockerroom encounter on Saturday:

As David Ortiz prepared to leave the Red Sox clubhouse after the team’s 3-2 loss to the Blue Jays, he did a double-take. The sight of Dan Shaughnessy, the Boston Globe columnist who confronted the slugger directly with suspicions about the possibility of his use of steroids, standing with a group of reporters, caught Ortiz’s attention.

“Look who it is,” Ortiz said.

He paused for a moment, then noted — loudly enough that all in the clubhouse were party to his address — that on the very day on which Shaughnessy interviewed him, he took a test for PEDs. Ortiz said he would be sure to pass along results of that test to the columnist. Ortiz became slightly more animated as he noted that he’d taken 40 tests administered by Major League Baseball.

Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports has his view. He said Shaugnessy is one of his “professional heroes.” Yet Rosenthal felt the column went too far:

Shaughnessy didn’t simply sit at his computer and write a speculative column on whether Ortiz, 37, is using performance-enhancing drugs. No, he confronted Ortiz directly, fearlessly. And he got Ortiz to tell him, on the record, “I guarantee you that later, you are not going to find out that I tested positive for some (expletive). It’s not happening. Guaranteed. Guaranteed.”

Terrific stuff, particularly when you recall that most of us were not vigilant enough reporting on baseball’s steroid problem when it first became prominent in the late 1990s. Shaughnessy gave Ortiz the chance to tell his side of the story, face to face, and Ortiz responded at length.

But here is my problem.

It is the same problem I had with Midwest Sports Fans’ Jerod Morris in 2009 when he raised suspicion about Raul Ibanez’s fast start for the Phillies, the same problem I had with the Toronto Star’s Damien Cox in 2010 when he wrote a column about the Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista headlined, “Gotta at least ask the question.”
It is the presumption of guilt.
It is not right.

Later Rosenthal writes:

It also is not fair to draw definitive conclusions from Ortiz’s hot start, his past injuries, his continued success in his late 30s. Shaughnessy wrote, “I told him he looks dirty.” He might as well have said, “OK, David, you’re guilty. Now prove yourself innocent.” In this society, it’s supposed to be the other way around.

Rosenthal concludes:

We blew it once before, blew it big time. But where many of us once were too cautious in our reporting, now we’re overly suspicious.

We’re supposed to ask hard questions, yes. But in the end, we’re supposed to be fair.

It is a fine line to be sure. Clearly, Shaughnessy didn’t want to get burned again by looking the other way. However, did a hot start warrant those kind of questions?

Perhaps, it is a reality of covering baseball in 2013.