Raul Ibanez is ticked off. And I don’t blame him one bit.

This is a blog. It appears on our Web site. It does not appear in our print edition. I don’t think it makes a lot of difference. I use the same parameters about posting material on this blog as I would in print.

If something doesn’t appear to be backed up by the facts, it likely will not make print. Same goes for the material I post online.

Not everyone works that way. It’s one of the problems of the online world. And one of its real dangers.

Ibanez is learning the dangers of the online world. It’s a world I troll around in every day. I don’t like everything I see out there. The Ibanez case is one reason why.

Ibanez is putting together an MVP type season. He’s also 37 years old.
After putting up solid numbers in his career, Ibanez has exploded this season.

He’s got 19 home runs and 54 RBIs. He’s second in the NL home run race, and tied for the lead in driving in runs. Those numbers are considerably better than his lifetime averages.

However, it also can be pointed out Ibanez is now playing on a winning team, batting behind Ryan Howard and playing in a very hitter-friendly ballpark.

But a blogger recently raised another possibility. Seemingly out of nothing more than his own curiosity, he suggested maybe Ibanez was getting a little help from other methods in this baseball era that seemingly is always looking over its shoulder at the shadow of steroids and performance-enhancement drugs.

The blog by itself likely never would have caused a ripple. That’s another thing about the Internet and blogosphere. There’s no shortage of voices out there. Most of them are simply screaming in the darkness.
That likely would have been the fate of the Ibanez item, right up until the moment it was mentioned in a metropolitan newspaper. When that item left the blogosphere, when it became ink in print, it took on a whole new dimension.

It’s something I deal with every day. My favorite thing about the Internet is that it is constantly changing. You post information as soon as you get it. You can update it. You can correct it.

But as I tell my staff, print is forever. It has a permanence that gives it legitimacy. Once we slap that ink on paper and it leaves the building, we cannot change the information.

That is both good and bad. One of the problems with the Internet is the tendency to simply throw stuff out there, regardless of whether it has any merit.

At this point the matter about Ibanez is merely conjecture. That did not stop it from taking on a life of its own.

Ibanez yesterday angrily denied any suggestion that his performance was being aided by an illegal substance.

He offered to take a drug test, to do whatever he had to do to prove the numbers he is putting up are legitimate.

Unfortunately, the same parameters don’t always apply to what gets posted online.