For some time now, since Jose Canseco and Ken Caminiti picked up their respective sledgehammers and broke baseball's sordid history of steroid abuse wide open, I've been waiting for the inevitable: news that a player from my favorite team, the Boston Red Sox, had been busted for or admitted to steroid use.  There were always whispers and possibilities, but they were all rumors, never anything concrete.

Until now.  In an ESPN The Magazine issue that hit newsstands this week, former Sox pitcher Paxton Crawford admitted to using a variety of steroids while with the team's minor and major league clubs in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  He also granted a very brief interview with the Boston Globe, answering a handful of questions before issuing the classic line, "It's kind of a sore subject, bro.  That's it," and hanging up.

The revelation was interesting coming from Crawford, who following the turn of the century was the latest in a line of Red Sox pitching prospects that included Aaron Sele, Brian Rose, Carl Pavano and Tomo Ohka.  His talent was as indisputable as his character was questionable, a dichotomy best illustrated by the July 2000 situation where he pitched a no-hitter for Pawtucket one night and cut himself badly by falling out of bed onto a glass the next; the circumstances under which the injury occurred were never fully explained, but it is commonly accepted that there was more to the story than initially reported.  Whatever the reason, Crawford, who had started for Boston on July 1 and July 6 of that year and was expecting another call-up when the injury occurred, didn't get back to the major leagues until mid-September.

The Crawford story is of great personal interest to me because for several months in 2003, he pitched for the Nashua Pride at the same time I was trying my hand in baseball by working as an intern in the team's Public Relations Department.  During our mutual time in Nashua, Crawford and I didn't cross paths all that often; he had his job to do and I had mine.  I came away from our limited interactions, however, with the sense that he was an overall decent guy whose biggest issue was that he had never finished growing up.  We all wanted to see him succeed but knew that to do so he had to learn to get out of his own way.

As I said, it was inevitable that someone from Boston past or present would somehow be connected to steroid use.  It was an expected turn of events.  But I never expected it to be someone I knew, someone I admired up close for his dedication to his craft.  The Atlantic League, in which the Pride played in from 1998 through 2005, isn't a place for prospects and future stars, but a proving ground for the guys who missed their first opportunity and have to claw for a second chance.  Crawford was one who scratched out of the league, got back into a major league organization and almost earned his return ticket to the majors.  But as my mother always says, "Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades," and at 28 years old, Crawford is back working on his parents' farm.

More than anything, this shows that there are two sides to the Steroid Era.  On one side are the Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiros and Jason Giambis -- players who used performance enhancing substances to enhance their value and put more money in theirs and the owners pockets.  On the other side, however, are the Paxton Crawfords, the prospects who turned to the juice as young, naive men, who didn't have the benefit of advanced trainers watching their every move, and who paid for their use with potentially career ending injuries.

The faces that used to be associated with the Steroid Era were the first group because sports fans always looked at the numbers those men had posted during the 10-15 years and wondered what might have been.  Now, because of Paxton Crawford, we should all look at the other side of the story: guys who used, abused and are back working, literally, on the farm, wondering what might have been.