The sun is still shining in L.A., but the Manny Ramirez suspension has brought some dark clouds over baseball.
These are tough times for baseball fans here in Southern California, where I’m currently travelling with the Blue Jays.
The sudden and tragic death of Angels’ pitcher Nick Adenhart at the hands of a drunk driver, whose license was already suspended for a previous DUI, continues to resonate by the day. Adenhart’s team, pegged as one of the favourites to win the American League pennant, is sitting two games below .500 in a weak West Division and, as we saw in the late stages of Wednesday night’s thrashing at the hands of the Blue Jays, nerves are starting to get frazzled in the OC. After getting beat around by baseball’s best offence, reliever Justin Speier and coach Mickey Hatcher almost came to blows on the bench after Speier continually beaked at home plate umpire Bill Hohn.
An hour after waking on Thursday, and while starting my daily prep for the second game of the Jays-Angels mini-series, word came down on the myriad of ESPN networks that Dodgers’ superstar Manny Ramirez had been suspended 50 games for violation of MLB’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. This came less than 12 hours after the Dodgers had set the modern Major League record by winning their first 13 home games of the season. Ramirez will not be eligible to return to the first-place Dodgers before July 3. He will also forfeit close to $8 million of his 2009 salary of $25 million.
In less than two months, Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez, two of the greatest hitters of this or any era, have been caught using performance-enhancing drugs, and admitted to it. Ramirez’s claim that the drug that triggered the positive test was prescribed by a doctor to treat a non-baseball medical condition will be scrutinized by the holier-than-thou media, and it should.
But, really, what has Ramirez, now lumped in with Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Rodriguez, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro -- some of the greatest players of the now-labelled "Steroid Era" -- really done here in the pantheon of performance-enhancing drug users that players haven’t been doing since the dawn of this game?
Athletes across all sports are always trying to get an edge to win, which is why they play the games. The winners get the highest accolades and make the most money. Now, don’t take this the wrong way: I’m not condoning any player who injects or swallows substances that are against the law unless prescribed by a physician. But whether they were corking bats, scuffing baseballs, throwing spitters or eating amphetamines like M&M’s, cheating in baseball has long been accepted... as long you don’t get caught.
The bottom line: Ramirez, the mayor of "Mannywood" who single-handedly revived a flagging franchise after helping bring two World Series championships to the Red Sox during his career in Boston, tested positive in the age of testing and punishment. Until the recent "outings" of the stars, the names of players previously caught were usually followed with "Who?"
Those days are now over and suddenly Jose Canseco’s proclamation on April 6 that there was a "90 per cent chance" that Manny was on a list of steroid users certainly rings true. This from the same Canseco who in his tell-all book, "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big," started naming names while the media scoffed at him.
I guess he gets the last laugh.
Carefree, charismatic and productive, Ramirez had revived baseball in Los Angeles and vaulted his team to the top of the heap. The Dodgers were finally making in-roads in a market dominated by the Lakers and NCAA football. But as I pull back my hotel curtains in Costa Mesa, the sun is shining like it always does in the land of enhanced breasts and earthquakes. But off in the distance, I think I see a dark cloud hovering over baseball yet again.
