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.

A-ROD, ROCKET, MANNY AND FAVRE

BRETT FAVRE - WHAT PART OF GOOD-BYE DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?

OMG, Brett Favre is coming out of retirement!!! Didn't see that coming. We're going to have to get Roger Goodell to change the name from NFL to NWFL--the Not Without Favre League--because apparently we can't play a season anymore without Brett Favre in it.

Now John Madden, another fossilized icon, will have to come out of retirement and
do all the Minnesota Favre's broadcasts.

And kudos to Minnesota for giving Brett this opportunity to get this petulant, childish, "I'll-show-you-Green-Bay" vendetta out of his system before he actually DOES retire.

I feel bad about it, but at times I feel a career ending injury is in order. Some people don't understand the meaning of the word retire.
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MANNY RAMIREZ TESTS POSITIVE - WHO SAW THIS COMING?

Apparently not George Mitchell, whose famed report has now been turned into a 400+ page doorstop. See-no-Red Sox users, hear-no-Red Sox users, speak-no-Red Sox users is that correct Senator Mitchell?

THE MITCHELL REPORT POLICY RE: RED SOX PLAYERS




I mean, what was to see here? Manny's body type certainly didn't change much from his Indians days throughout the Red Sox era. It's not like his head, obscured by the dreads, didn't grow right before our very eyes.

I'm sorry, those are not valid criteria anymore? Hard to keep up with the changes in the spin from the media acolytes. More flips and spins than in a Flying Walenda circus show.

On-deck, as he was for many years with the Red Sox during the Sox nation glory years, David Ortiz. He already presented his "maybe I took PED's by mistake in one of those Dominican milkshakes" excuse.

Where are all the stat-heads and roto-heads with their pocket protectors now? Care to run a before-testing vs. after testing look at Ortiz's power numbers. That's OK, you can wait until he hits his next HR this season, which will be his first HR this season, by the way.

But this fits in with the owners strategy of throwing selected players under the bus, taking no responsibility themselves for the culture that they and theirs turned a blind eye to on the one hand, while gleefully ringing the cash register and fleecing the taxpayers for low-cost stadiums on the other hand. Not once have they taken responsibility for their role in the "steroid era".

MLB POSITION RE: THEIR ROLE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE STEROID ERA



The same media hand-puppets who have always aided and abetted the owners in shaping the agenda and public perception also continue to profit on both ends of the deal.

These guys will pen glowing autobiographies on the one hand--as Lupica did for McGwire--and when the tide turns, they simply pen tear-down books about A-Rod or Barry or Clemens.

Seems rather scummy to me and it comes as no surprise that the same newspapers that these guys and gals work for are seemingly going bankrupt by the day. When you are morally bankrupt as a business person, it doesn't take too long before you become economically bankrupt as well.
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A-ROD IS A USER? - WOW AND THE MSM LOVES HIM SO MUCH


And still does, don't kid yourself. At least the New York centric media hacks and the ESPN crowd seem to be falling in line BEHIND A-Rod and against Selena Roberts, the reporter who broke the story.

Remember how the Game of Shadows authors were held up as potential Pulitzer Prize winners? That is until the Pulitzer prize committee took an unbiased, critical look at the book and spit on it.

Where is the pathetic daily whining from the panty-waisted crowd now that their self-selected Savior of the Game has been stained? Isn't A-Rod tainting the legacy of Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio? Where are Costas and Lupica now? How about Yankee acolyte Olbermann and his sidekick Little Danny Patrick?

The spin changes now that one of their own is caught. And the media is so good at identifying cheaters aren't they? They are going to put a guy or two into the Hall of Fame, who it will later come out conclusively cheated and then they will be stuck right in the middle the problem.

Baseball had its chance to get out of this mess from a PR standpoint around the time of the Mitchell Report by adopting the Giambi solution and having all parties, ALL PARTIES apologize to the fans, draw a line in the sand and say "From this day forward, if you test positive...God help you". But they didn't, they went to their separate corners and came out swinging, undoing years of cooperation between the players and the owners. The next labor negotiations ought to be a real doozy.
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CLEMENS AND HIS FORMER BFFL ANDY PETTITTE

And now a book about the rise and fall of Roger Clemens. Couldn't see that one coming either. To be fair, I have never understood why there has not been a parallel story to the Bonds - Griffey conversation regarding Bonds' jealousy of McGwire - Sosa as the motivation to Bonds getting all geared up.

The Clemens story would revolve around the infamous quote from then Boston Red Sox GM Dan Duquette that Clemens was "in the twilight of his career". This was justification for the Sox not re-signing Clemens and led to his subsequent rebirth with Toronto-the Yankees-Astros. Wouldn't shoving Duquette's very personal words up his butt qualify as motivation to get jacked up?

Maybe it's just me, but I don't see why MLB chooses to blackball Bonds and now Clemens, while Tejada still plays on as if nothing happened.

And we're spending $12 million dollars and counting to prosecute Bonds, in a case that seems to be heading to the same level of cultural disappointment (or higher) reached after the O.J. verdict.

TEJADA'S LEGAL PROBLEM-RESOLUTION (from Wikipedia):

On February 10, 2009, Tejada was charged with lying to Congress about performance enhancing drug usage in Major League Baseball.[14] On February 11, Tejada pleaded guilty to charges that he lied to Congress in 2005. He faced up to one year in federal prison and deportation.[15]. On 26 March, 2009, he received a one year probation.[16]

So let's review. One year probation for lying to Congress. Not sure what Bonds would get for lying to a federal grand jury, Clemens would have been lying to Congress as well.

That just seems like a lot of money, time and effort to prosecute a case where the penalty falls in the "spitting on the sidewalk" category. Again, maybe it's just me.
Sort of like trying to kill a housefly with a hammer.