Jonathan Papelbon said he used Toradol during his Boston days. (Getty Images)

In any other media climate, the use of a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory painkiller that's neither illegal nor banned by MLB would be a nonstory, but times being what they are Jonathan Papelbon's admitted use of Toradol is noteworthy. 

Gordon Edes of ESPN Boston reports that the Phillies closer said he regularly received injections of Toradol while he was a member of the Red Sox. Once he signed with Philadelphia, however, things changed. Edes writes:

Papelbon said that when he was administered a physical by the Philadelphia Phillies prior to signing as a free agent after the 2011 season, doctors asked him if he used Toradol. When he answered in the affirmative, he was told that he would have to stop.

"They told me, 'We don't do that here.' That kind of surprised me," Papelbon said Saturday, speaking by phone from Phillies camp in Clearwater, Fla. "I haven't had a single Toradol shot since.

"But here's the thing you have to understand. There are so many organizations that do it. Not only baseball, but every sport. Football, basketball, hockey. It's not just the Red Sox."

Papelbon goes to on to say that using Toradol made him "feel pretty damn good" and that it was mostly used to help players cope with the rigors of the 162-game season -- not unlike the underlying reasons for rampant amphetamine usage in the 1960s and 1970s.

Again, though, Toradol is legal, and its use is permitted by MLB. If anything, though, this again brings into focus the arbitrary nature of what we classify as a performance-enhancing drug most sinister and what we consider part of the usual traing-recovery-maintenance protocols.

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