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Too Manny Chances for Ramirez

May 8th, 2009

Manny Ramirez has always made himself tough to like. Despite his sweet swing and incessant smiling, Ramirez’s career has been filled with a compilation of moments that make him almost impossible to root for.

Still, because he is of the game’s finest hitters in recent history – and because his presence in the middle of a batting order can make a decent team good and a good one great – people, and teams, have found a way to look past his childish antics.

Here is to hoping that Thursday’s revelation – that Ramirez became the latest Major League Baseball star to test positive for performance-enhancing drugs – may have put an end to baseball’s love affair with a guy who deserves no love.

Ramirez quit on the Boston Red Sox last season so that they would have to trade him. And like a kid who throws a tantrum and then gets the lollipop he wanted, Ramirez got traded and has since become the West Coast’s most revered athlete not named Kobe.

What were the Red Sox doing that was so awful that Ramirez just had to get away from a team he had helped win two championships? They were paying him $20 million to play a kid’s game. How dare them!

Ramirez has gotten away with being a bad teammate and being a guy who doesn’t play hard because he smiles a lot and seems to have fun. He’s a knuckle head, but fans and clubs have always seen him as “their” knuckle head.

It’s like baseball is Manny’s parent and he’s the problem-child kid who knocks over all the mailboxes in the neighborhood and plays ding-dong-ditch every weekend. Baseball just keeps giving him hugs and saying, “oh Manny, you sure are something.”

When he refused to enter a game as a pinch-hitter for the Boston Red Sox back in 2003? That was just “Manny being Manny.” When he didn’t run down the first base line after groundouts on countless occasions? Manny was being Manny.

When he fought with a teammate in the dugout last year, or a few weeks later when he shoved Boston’s longtime traveling secretary to the ground during a dispute over complimentary game tickets? You guessed it. Manny being Manny.

You see, Ramirez was a major distraction in Boston, but he was always viewed as a good problem to have. Like having two shirts that look good on you but only being able to wear one. He was an inconvenience, but because of his offensive prowess, that was okay.

When the Red Sox had finally had enough of his lack of effort and locker room divisiveness last season they traded him to the Los Angeles Dodgers. He slugged Los Angeles into the playoffs and then signed a two-year, $45 million contract this offseason that will keep him in LA through 2010.

If teams – like Boston for several years and Los Angeles now – want to forgive a guy who doesn’t conduct himself professionally, that’s fine. If they deem that his Hall-of-Fame bat is enough to allow him to act like a fool then that’s their decision and their $20-plus million to waste.

But upon finding out that he tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug (which is apparently used during and after steroid cycles in order to increase testosterone production), teams have to start changing their stance toward this guy.

If you want to put trust in a guy who has quit on a team before, that’s not smart but it’s somewhat understandable when you’re getting a .330 hitter who can hit 35 home runs.

But can you trust a cheater? Or worse yet, a guy who after he was suspended for testing positive blamed a doctor for prescribing a drug to him that he didn’t know was on MLB’s banned-list?

What’s Ramirez going to do when he strikes out in the 9th inning of a critical game in October? Say that his doctor told him not to swing? Will teams and fans believe him then, too?

This is a new low for a guy who has gotten low enough to win plenty of games of limbo in his career. Somehow, yet again, people will probably find a way to rally around his smile and Whoopi Gohlberg-like dreadlocks.

And I’d just like to ask why?

Posted by Grant Paulsen Filed in General, MLB, Articles

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Too Manny Chances for Ramirez

May 8th, 2009

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