Alex Rodriguez

With 27 World Championships, the New York Yankees have dominated the MLB for nearly 100 years.

By employing some of the best hitters in the history of baseball, New York's continuing professionalism mixed with the shear ability to consistently win has become the epitome of their championship swagger.

As much as Major League Baseball would like to set the issue of steroid use behind them and move on, the debate is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

The recent Barry Bonds trial and Manny Ramirez's sudden retirement due to a second failed drug test further pulled the issue back into the spotlight, and Roger Clemens' trial this summer will keep us from forgetting the issue this season.

Just over two weeks into the Major League Baseball season and we have already seen our fair share of surprises from clubs like the Indians and Royals off to hot starts, along with teams like the struggling Tigers and Red Sox.

This is NOT a list of the two greatest hitters for each team. This is a list of the greatest individual seasons for two hitters on each team. 

Steroids are ignored. Barry Bonds is on this list. So is Alex Rodriguez (twice, actually, and not with the Yankees). Rafael Palmeiro, Manny Ramirez, and other known or assumed users are here. 

Listed by division, not ranked by greatness. 

The biggest issue in baseball is the usage of steroids. Bud Selig and the rest of the league have become more wish-washy and flip-floppy than any politician on the face of the planet. Implementing a ban on performance enhancing drugs is only a fraction of what the league needs to do to keep PEDs out of Major League Baseball.

One the greatest right-handed hitters of all time retired on Friday afternoon.  Manny Ramirez goes riding off into the sunset after a career spent lighting up the scoreboard.

Manny Ramirez has announced his retirement from major league baseball, rather than continue with the league's drug use program.

The slugger is just the most recent in a litany of elite hitters who have seen their reputations tarnished by the use of performance-enhancing drugs. How great could they have been without?

Manny will go down as one of the greatest pure hitters of his generation, and will never sniff the Hall of Fame because "great" wasn't enough.

Just as many kids growing up in the late-80's and 90's, I had a huge collection of baseball cards. This was a few years before it began to cost more for a pack of cards than it did for a gallon of milk. It was also when people collected ball-cards in hopes they would be lucky enough to pull out a card of their childhood hero.  

Protagonist and antagonist. Hero and villain.

Every novel has them, even poorly-written ones.  In many stories, they are easily defined. 

But what happens when it becomes difficult to delineate which is which?

It seems that the great stories—the ones that remain in our psyche—have a protagonist-antagonist dynamic that leans toward this type of ambiguity, causing tension and making us wonder:  Who is the good guy?

The curse of the Yankees continues.

The Minnesota Twins began a four game death march in Yankee Stadium Monday by getting handed their third loss of the season. Yankees pitcher Ivan Nova went three scoreless innings before Jim Thome doubled to center scoring Justin Morneau and Delmon Young. Nova gave up a third run in the fifth when the Twins new import Tsuyoshi Niskioka also doubled to deep centerfield scoring Alexi Casilla.