Major League Baseball announced today that Los Angeles Dodgers left-fielder Manny Ramirez has tested positive for steroids and will begin serving a 50-game suspension tonight.
Wow. Wow. Wow.
This actually surprises me more than Alex Rodriguez’s admission of steroid use. Manny. He has such a fluid swing and perfect balance. You watch him swing a bat and I honestly never considered him as a steroid-user since his swing was so perfect. I never suspected his power, because his swing was so powerful that I assumed it could generate it.
Well, I was wrong and this leads me to ask a whole new series of questions. Before this, the league, fans, and media abided by the policy, “innocent until proven guilty”. If you weren’t connected to steroids, you were assumed to have been clean. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. How can anyone be above suspicion when the two greatest hitters in baseball have been caught in the last two months? Now, it is “guilty until proven innocent”.
Even more than that, if Manny and A-Rod felt the need to use steroids to keep up, than what players didn’t use steroids? If they needed them, then what player in the league could somehow resist he urge to dope? For the last couple years, there was some suspicion about A-Rod, from Canseco to Katie Couric. There was no suspicion about Manny and that is why this is such a bombshell.
Manny’s comments that it was a mistake with his doctor and that he accepts responsibility, but didn’t actually use steroids is more of an embarrassment than an excuse. Really Manny, you think anyone will believe that? Canseco commented recently that there is a “90% chance” that Manny’s name is in the list of 103 players who tested positive for steroids in 2003 (the one with A-Rod in it). Wel
l, that chance is now 100%. He is on the list. I have no doubt about it and no one else should. Canseco hasn’t been wrong before and Manny just got caught. So why is Manny making an excuse?
His name will trickle off that list and all of a sudden he will have to answer questions about his steroid use as well as his lies. Once that happens, his Hall-of-Fame chance is gone. The lie is what will break the camel’s back. If he came fully clean now, admitted it all, and told every speck of truth (like A-Rod failed to do), he could still savage his image and career. He could still have a shot at the hall of fame. The lie now ends any shot of him being inducted. It will come out. Just wait and see. I don’t understand why players think they can still hide from the truth? The media is too good and too connected. Any little flaw in your story will be exploited and reporters will find the truth. This game of cat-and-mouse, where a player is caught, makes an excuse, and then is caught in a lie, is getting old. Man up, Manny. You cheated. You got caught. Stop Lying.
Danny Vinik 
The thing that bothers me the most about all of the fans-who-hate is the double standards.
Oh we love you..wait you cheated…nevermind. If it wasn’t for the fans, baseball players would have never cheated in the first place. They are trying to provide a product (baseball) that fans enjoy (home runs). To do this, they need to bulk up because the Babe Ruth diet (Beer and hot dogs) only worked for Babe Ruth.
And worse of all, Manny said his doctor was treating a personal condition with the substance he got caught “using”. It was made clear it was NOT a steroid, but a PED. PEDs are DIFFERENT than steroids. It is VERY possible that he has a health condition that needed treated, and the treatment got him suspended. When it is all said and done, if he comes out and reveals his personal health problem (which is really none of our business), won’t all of the haters feel stupid if the drug was a cancer-treating drug used to treat his un-publically-known testicular cancer (or something similar)? If that is what comes out of this and major league baseball has to change their rules because of it, are every single one of you annoying hater-fans going to write him a personal apology for being total jerks?
Kudos to the fans who came to Dodger stadium in their Manny-gear. Those who turn their back on him…..go watch fishing or hunting…those two sports are the only ones that are 100% ‘clean’.
Fans do love home runs, because watching players hit the ball harder than we can dream of astounds us. Just like watching Michael Phelps beat opponent after opponent or watching LeBron James soar to the hoop, we love watching home runs, because they simply are something we can barely dream of doing.
When normal fans (like me) find out that these players weren’t completely honest in how they hit home runs, that astonishment dissapears and turns into disgust. Without steroids, of course they are still a hundred times better at hitting a baseball than I am, but then I end up asking, why did they need steroids? Manny was a phenomenal baseball player without steroids. Better than I can ever dream of being, so many people (including myself) feel disgusted that a player who was blessed with such great skill still chooses to cheat.
If you are naive enough to believe his excuse, than you need to look around baseball and think again. No one believes it. Listen to any sportswriter across the country. Listen to other players’ comments on Manny. Listen to Canseco or just listen to Manny himself. If he wants any chance to prove himself clean, he’s got to talk to the media. Sure, if he talks it will likely make things worse, but if he doesn’t talk, he’s automatically guilty.
I played college baseball at the junior college and NAIA levels. On both levels, we had guys that were juicing. Did they make it to the show? NO!! They ended up getting hurt and getting fat. Matter fact, I don’t think ANY of the users on my teams earned All-Conference/All-Region/All-American or any of that. On the contrary, my college roommate, who had an All-American junior season with an 11-2 pitching record, took a cycle our senior season only to pull a muscle days before our opening game. He fought arm problems all season and ended up with a losing record. Performance enhancing my a$$!!
I’ve had it with all you laymen (or should I say, “lame-men,” who believe all the hype that steroids turn you into superman overnight. Who do you know that’s done steroids?? How many of you have played baseball at at least the varsity level in HS?? How many of you know what it takes to play baseball well, or even how to?? Technique, timing, and hand-eye coordination give you the ability to hit and hit for power. Stregnth is marginal, but it does help you put on a show in BP (uhh, BP means batting practice for those of you who never played).
So lets run these guys, these “cheaters” out of the Hall of Fame. But lets leave in all those racists, drunkards, and adulterers that populate it now.=P
The Hall of Fame is about the HISTORY of baseball and its best players. You can’t just erase history just cuz it “shames” you. If that was the case, Germany wouldn’t teach history from about 1935-1945.
GO DODGERS!!
If steroids help only a tiny bit, then why do so many great players feel the need to use them? As I said, Manny was one of the best right-handed hitters in baseball history without steroids and would have been a first-ballot hall-of-famer. He didn’t need to cheat.
I said above why fans love home runs and admire players like Manny so much. It’s because they can do things we can only dream of. It hurts though when we find out they decided to cheat when we’d give anything to be half the player they are. That’s why fans get so upset when we find out players used steroids. It doesn’t matter how big an affect or how small an affect it has on a player. It’s cheating. I can’t understand a mid-level player cheating just to stay in the game a lot more than Manny, A-Rod, and Clemens. None of those 3 needed to cheat.
The Hall of Fame is all about “honoring excellence”. How does Manny fall in to that category? Baseball-wise, of course his hitting stats are excellent, but he is a cheater. By definition, cheaters are not excellent. The magnitude of the affect of steroids doesn’t matter. Using steroids is cheating and anyone who uses them has enhanced their stats (no matter how small) in ways that players throughout history could not. The Hall of Fame is also about “connecting generations”. Well I cannot connect Manny across generations, because Manny had an unfair advantage. How is it fair to compare Ted Williams and Manny? The answer is it’s not and that’s why players who use steroids shouldn’t be allowed in the Hall of Fame.