It's not quite as bad as Marion Jones' Olympic Gold Medals being taken away, Lance Armstrong being accused of doping, or Mike Tyson biting someone's ear off, but Manny Ramirez being suspended by Major League Baseball for 50 games for violating the game's drug policy is the most devastating positive test we've seen or will see.
The situation is particularly devastating for Dodgers fans, but the impact is not limited to one city on the West coast. The impact will ripple all throughout baseball.
First and foremost, the Dodgers are in a world of trouble. Anyone who thinks they can just stand up and replace a .348 hitter with six homers and 20 RBIs is out of their mind. Even if the front office pulls a rabbit out of a hat and does replace the missing offense, the "Manny aura" is still missing.
Orlando Hudson will suffer.
Andre Ethier will suffer.
James Loney will suffer.
In turn, the pitching staff will suffer.
Straight up and down the lineup, the Dodgers are going to suffer without Manny Ramirez's name on the lineup card.
Of course, what is lost in translation through all this is the fact that Manny isn't guilty of using steroids. While it is unclear as to exactly what banned substance he is guilty of using, we can't jump to conclusions and accuse him of juicing.
Mark down Thursday, May 7, 2009. The Los Angeles Dodgers are 13 games over .500 and lead the division by 6.5 games (five in the loss column).
If I had to guess, I'd say by July 3, they'll be just 10 games over. Without Manny, they're no more than a .500 club.
Of course, that is enough to win the West.
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6 comments:
I might be naive but I'm not all that worried. I'm just glad its the first half of the season and not the 2nd half or into the postseason. We'll still be in first place in the west, just maybe not in first in the majors.
Its a great time for the young guns to step up. Hudson and Blake are great leaders and Torre is the Zen Master of baseball. I'd rather have Manny for the whole year but 50 games won't kill us.
Oh, no, he's no Manny but we do have Juan Pierre and this is such a perfect time for him to prove his worth and showcase his abilities for other teams so we can maybe trade him before the deadline. The big picture looks decent.
That's pretty optimistic. You don't feel betrayed by Manny? It seems as the big names continue to come out people are becoming desensitized.
Bill Simmons wrote a great article that basically sums it all up.
Everyone is/was doing it.
I don't feel betrayed, I think desensitized hits the nail on the head. I think another reason is he didn't fail a steroid test. Most likely it was used for the steroid reason but there's still that doubt too.
I'll have to read that article. He writes for espn.com right?
Its really getting to the point that I start to reason with this whole era. If everyone is doing it, is it still cheating? I think so but if you look at it as a whole, the playing field is pretty fair. Which is a very unfortunate way of thinking. Steroids saved baseball in '98 from the '94 strike and now they're killing it again.
Agreed. Maybe we should just go back to not caring what they do. I went through all my old baseball cards today and almost every single semi-valuable one is now worth crap because of steroids.
Nolan Ryan, Cal Ripken, Jr., Tony Gwynn...those are just about all the clean ones.
And yeah, Bill Simmons is on ESPN.com. It should be on the front page of Page 2.
I just finished that article and it was great. Almost sounded like I took some things from it in a previous comment.
I wonder if there was a salary cap in baseball if steroids would have ever run so rampant. Considering A-Rod's excuse, you know he meant it too, there have to be other players that feel like they have to live up to their contracts. And if that means cheating, then that's what will happen. Also, you can look at it as guys wanting to be paid that huge money that the guys hitting above him are making.
Such an unfortunate era to be a baseball fan.
the sad thing about Manny and others like him is that juicing might not even help them play baseball any better
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