The recent retirement of Manny Ramirez was more than just a pre-emptive strike on his behalf against having to serve a 100-game sentence for testing positive for steroids a second time.
The action all but eliminated him from any future consideration for the Baseball Hall of Fame. It’s all simple logic, straight from recent HOF voting results.
Rafael Palmeiro might still be on the ballot, but the 11% turnout on his first year of eligibility is much closer to the museum’s outhouse than any sort of consensus steering in his favor. From a numbers standpoint, you can’t argue that Manny would be much more deserving for enshrinement than Raffy’s 569 bombs and 3,020 hits. And Raffy tested positive for steroids just once to Manny’s twice.
Throw in the aloofness factor and things look so bad for Manny’s candidacy, he just might become the first Steroid Era giant with obvious HOF numbers to fall short of the Hall’s minimum 5% threshold needed to stay on the ballot. He could be one and out, relegating his otherwise prestigious career down to the level of the Lonnie Smiths and Danny Tartabulls of the baseball world.
Major league drug testing first flagged Ramirez in May of 2009 when he tested positive for a female fertility drug commonly associated with steroid cycle treatments. After several weeks and about 10,000 estrogen jokes, Manny returned from his 50-game suspension only to have his name leaked (along with David Ortiz) as being on the infamous list of “anonymous” positive steroid tests of 2003, as reported by the New York Times.
That brings us to 2011 and Manny’s second official infraction of baseball’s drug policy. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s three steroid strikes against Ramirez. With a little mental extrapolation, it’s quite reasonable to think that Ramirez could have used steroids his entire career. Remember, ‘Roids use was running rampant throughout major league clubhouses as early as—well, just around Manny’s rookie season in 1994. It would be another decade before baseball started taking steroid testing seriously. Does anyone have a logical explanation why Manny would juice throughout the ’00s while testing was in place, but not in the ’90s when steroids weren’t yet banned, or even acknowledged, by major league baseball?
This is by far the most severe strike against any steroid-linked superstar this side of the self-proclaimed godfather of steroids, Jose Canseco. And if this doesn’t influence your judgment in applying some level of skepticism to the integrity of the numbers Manny Ramirez has produced the past two decades as he became known as one of the “greatest right-handed hitters of all time,” there are a few internet spammers who would love to have your email address.
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.
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, Nice post, but at the SABR event on Saturday morning there was considerable discussion of Manny and there were opinions back and forth, but all agreed that on merit he deserves in the HOF. The comparison was made to Orlando Cepeda and while I am not certain that Manny and Cepeda were in the same breath–the discussion ranged over numerous players–it seems a valid comparison. Do we know with any certainty that Manny’s infraction was PEDs? It has been written as such, but I haven’t seen anything definitive. A list of players was put on the floor that included all of the PED players of note and a chapter officer contended they will all be in the HOF in our lifetime. As far as Manny goes, I tend to agree. Bonds not so much if he is convicted. Which we should know soon.
Ted, thanks for the thoughts. Many believe the level of tolerance for the Steroid Era stars and the HOF will grow much larger over time. I suppose I’m on the intolerant side of the issue here; at the same time I would be VERY surprised if Manny doesn’t take a hit on the ballots with his two and a half steroid infractions. For whatever it’s worth, the BBWAA hasn’t yet demonstrated a thinking along the lines of what you described at the SABR meeting, although I suppose 15 years is a long enough time for viewpoints to shift.