Manny Ramirez

I was at the gym the other day (these pecs aren’t going to wail on themselves) and I happen to catch a segment of one of ESPN’s talking head panel shows on one of the standard-issue muted flat-screen TVs placed every five feet around the wall of any self-respecting personal fitness facility. The following discussion topic was written across the screen:

“Who hurt their Hall of Fame chances more, A-Rod or Manny?”

Much has been made of Manny Ramirez's suspension for using performance-enhancing drugs, and rightfully so. When one of Major League Baseball's most prominent stars embroils himself in the game's biggest scandal, it figures to get a lot of run in the media.

If you listen closely to the static, somewhere in all the volume are whispers about how the revelation benefits no team more than our beloved San Francisco Giants—about how the 50-game hiatus for Manny has saved the Orange and Black season.

To a degree, the whispers are appropriate.

Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Manny Ramirez was recently suspended 50 games for testing positive for a banned drug known as "hCG" (human chorionic gonadotropin), a drug often used to soften the effects of ending a cycle of steroids. Ramirez said the drugs were prescribed by a physician for a "personal health issue." Should we buy Ramirez' explanation?

Doctor-prescribed? Personal health issue? Let me respond to those claims with a phrase that I'm sure Manny, and many other cheating baseball players, have uttered to direct a syringe full of steroids ... "my ass."

You would think that Manny Ramirez was caught fighting pit bulls alongside Martha Stewart.

ESPN's Bill Simmons says that he is "confronting my worst nightmare." Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports believes that it is time to talk about "lifetime bans." Boston Globe writer Tony Massarotti says "everyone is guilty until proven innocent."

The sports radio and comment boards have been cesspools of racism. It's always easy to hate, especially someone who plays a game for a living and makes millions of dollars.

The Los Angeles Dodgers are in first place in the NL West and enjoy the best record in baseball.  So all is well in L.A., right? 

Hardly! 

Like any major league team, the Dodgers have a list of issues, problems, and contingencies to fix and plan for.   The Dodgers look to Ned Colletti (general manager) and Joe Torre (manager) to keep a competitive team on the field and on top of the standings. 

Looking back on my days as a recruiter that specialized in placing candidates in the accounting field I will always remember one candidate’s quote that “the numbers tell a story” and regardless of what you are being told the “numbers do not lie”. 

With that said,

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Manny Ramirez’ 50-game suspension for using performance-enhancing drugs came as a shock to many in the baseball world.

Manny was widely regarded as one of the best pure-hitters in the game, and his recent positive test for a substance that can be used to recover from a steroid cycle was another dark cloud hanging over the national pastime.

It's not even because Manny Ramirez wears Los Angeles Dodger blue (OK, that's part of it).

In news I'm sure you'll hear from my fingers first, Ramirez has tested positive for human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). 

Although his agent, that bastion of credibility and integrity Scott Boras, tried at first to spin it away with a story about a prescribed medication for a personal ailment, I'm beginning to think that might not be the case.

Right off the bat, hCG is a female fertility drug.

None of us speak Latin, but most of us have heard the term “caveat emptor”—defined by the dictionary that pops up when I hit the F12 button on my Mac keyboard as "the principle that the buyer alone is responsible for checking the quality and suitability of goods before a purchase is made."

And so it seems another baseball great has fallen. Fallen to the inevitable black hole in the baseball universe called steroids. 

Manny Ramirez is the latest player to fall to the allegations that he took steroids, and while I can go on and on about Mannywood or what the implications this has had on the game. I'm not going to, solely for the reason that this is an article about why this is an ample opportunity for the San Francisco Giants and the rest of the NL West to take advantage of a team blindsided by the recent controversial news.