Manny turns in his Hall of Fame ticket | Seamheads.com

Just Manny being Manny. It seems like he was only concerned with making as much as he could, for as long as he could with little or no regard for his legacy. I love the comments from one of the ESPN knuckleheads. Something along the lines of "Manny may have earned my HOF vote even after his first PED blip, but now.....?"

I guess it's one...two...two strikes your out at the old Hall of Fame for some of these guys. Some draw the line at one blip. And some will forever allow for even the slightest hint of dabbling in PED's to keep certain players out. It will be interesting to see this all reconciled.



Manny turns in his Hall of Fame ticket | Seamheads.com:

"Yet, many a baseball writer and blogger will continue to echo the same sentiments for Manny that they’ve been uttering for other over-glorified steroid-juiced superstars by telling us that “you can’t ignore the numbers.” I don’t get it. I don’t understand why these baseball analysts have so much trouble connecting the dots of performance and steroid use. These two entities go together like Bonnie and Clyde. There is no other real reason for a player to take steroids aside from enhancing performance, which in turn fattens the numbers. With what we know now, why would anyone continue to fall to their knees in reverence of what Manny accomplished? To do so sounds a little like praising Bernie Madoff as a brilliant investor before mentioning two paragraphs later about how he scammed millions of innocent victims of their retirement money."

An interesting analogy IMO to Madoff, and likely an unintentional one at that.

Madoff has made the case that the banks who held custody of his funds and do have an obligation to monitor Suspicious Activity (money laundering, etc.) and the regulatory agencies such as the S.E.C. were too either complicit or derelict in their duty to protect consumers.

I’ve been there with Manny. I had my fingers on the DVR buttons, watching in amazement frame-by-frame as a 97-mph fastball made its way toward him, noticing how he somehow was able to wait until the ball was but ten feet away before he even started his swing, then clotheslining the ball to a lucky fan somewhere in home-run land 430 feet away. The freaky hand-eye response times; the phenomenal bat speed; the legendary offensive numbers. Do ya think, just maybe, there might be a connection?

Sportswriter Mike Lupica, George Costanza’s favorite author, said on ESPN’s recent edition of The Sports Reporters that one of the biggest mysteries of the Steroid Era is why players as hugely talented as Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, and Barry Bonds felt the need to tap the chemical world to complement their amazing skills.

To me, it’s more of a mystery why sportswriters keep asking this question.

Adios, Manny.

— John Cappello

You may have three of the top sluggers in McGwire, Bonds, Sosa, one of the premier pure hitters in Palmiero, and now one of the top RH power hitters in Manny Ramirez as well as the top RH power pitcher of the era in Clemens denied entrance into the Baseball HOF. Even Jeff Bagwell may not pass the "eye test".

We may end up with more / better players from the era sitting outside than inside the Hall of Fame.

And the annual PR black eye to baseball that will surround the Hall of fame voting / induction will be the gift that keeps on giving. Like a venereal disease or a genital wart, it will be an obnoxious, unpleasant reminder that spoils what would otherwise be a wonderfully, pleasant baseball event.

WAY TO GO BASEBALL!!!

The owners and the press -- since they position themselves as the great protector of the game --
were either asleep at the switch, too busy surfing porn (a la the S.E.C. in Madoff) or ringing the cash register (like the banks in Madoff), to do their jobs. Part of which is protecting the integrity of the game.

There was plenty of evidence that GM's and upper management were well aware of what was going on and did nothing about the behavior. As usual, we throw a sacrificial lamb or two on the altar of the court of public opinion, hope everyone forgives and forgets, and get back to business as usual.

They should change their name to the In-Justice Department.

There should be trials for the folks higher up in the food chain than we generally see in these cases. And there is a great amount of selective prosecution and crony-ism in how we dispense justice in this country.

That, in the end, may end up being the larger crime that is perpetrated on society.