Kuzul

Okay, now you can boo him.

And throw some dirt on the Rays season while you’re at it.

Manny Ramirez was one step ahead of the law Friday when he abruptly quit retired from baseball, which appeared ready to slap him with a second suspension. This slap was for 100 games, after he again violated the sport’s drug policy.

Manny, 38, bailed.

He shut it down faster than the federal government ever could.

Manny just contracted, so here we are.

So much for him being part of the marketing push for the new ballpark that was going to help keep the club in the area.

In the end, it was just Manny being dirty.

Again.

One thing’s for sure: He will not be wearing a Rays hat in Cooperstown.

Who am I kidding? Like there is a chance in hell he will find his way into the Hall of Fame without having first purchased a ticket.

The last time around, in Los Angeles, he was caught using a fertility drug.

Bet the Rays had twins when this news came down.

Scratch one cleanup hitter.

What a sordid episode.

What an embarrassment.

True, the optimist might say the Rays got the inevitable Manny headache out of the way early. Manny’s career here lasted about 119 minutes—okay, six games, really; five of which he played in, getting just one hit in 17 at-bats with his last plate appearance Wednesday afternoon.

Who will ever forget it? Manny’s last swing will go down as a pinch-hit fly out.

But it doesn’t help the perception, and maybe the reality, that this Rays season is already a goner. While Manny avoided suspension, the Rays will serve out the remaining 155 games of their 2011 sentence. They began the season 0-6 and the only question is who in this B-squad lineup is going to step up and not hit in Manny’s place. We haven’t even mentioned the grim prospect of Casey Kotchman bobblehead night.

But I digress.

Back to Manny being dirty.

As recently as two years ago, Ramirez would have been a no-brainer, with tape-measure Hall of Fame credentials.

Now he gets in a line that might never move, with Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens and the rest. Manny will always be the guy who got nailed cheating not once, not twice, but three times. (Remember that 2003 list that A-Rod and Big Sloppy were found on?)

That, my friends, is what thou calls a “tainted legacy.”

“Obviously, it’s not going to help,” Rays manager Joe Maddon said, according to Hot Trends News.

Manuel Aristides Ramirez smashed 555 home runs and drove in 1,831 runs, but he was hardly ever in a place where things didn’t end badly, though the speed of his departure here was truly stunning.

When Maddon sat Ramirez for most of Wednesday’s game at Tropicana Field, and announced Manny would also miss Thursday’s game in Chicago to attend to a “family matter,” there were some raised eyebrows. After all, Manny played the part of the happy camper all spring training. He sold himself to a lot of people. There were no troubling signs as the season began, unless you count 1-for-17.

Then all of this hits, seemingly out of nowhere (please note the sarcasm).

What a shocker!

I mean who on earth would have ever thought this guy would have been so stupid to use, and get caught using, again?

Well you can’t see me right now, but I kind of look like this image you see to the right.

Perhaps even more embarrassingly, the Rays got caught giving him another chance.

They said up front there was always a risk. Damn right there was.

It’s hard to tell what real impact this will have on this season. I mean, the Rays were clearly capable of not scoring runs with Manny.

They didn’t have much invested in him ($2  million) and there was always a chance he would have nothing left, something I thought while watching him last season. Maybe the Rays should have gone after Vladimir Guerrero after all.

But they didn’t.

They rolled the dice on this ass-clown fully knowing that he had a long, sordid history of screwing over entire organizations.

So once MLB released a statement stating that the league notified Ramirez of an issue with the drug policy, something he is very familiar with, he abruptly decided to quit instead of facing a 100-game suspension, since this would have been his second positive test.

Basically, he took his ball and went home. It’s not really surprising with how the tail-end of Manny’s career went.

Manny pretty much quit with the Red Sox when he showed his displeasure with his contract situation by not running out ground balls and possibly bringing his game down to intentionally not produce, until he was traded to the Dodgers.

That whole mess of a situation, along with his suspensions, clearly shows Manny had no respect for the game of baseball. His latest move of quitting six games into the season is a joke, but one where no one should be surprised.

In the end, the game of baseball is a lot better off without Manny Ramirez.

Good freakin’ riddance.

This article is also featured on The Rantings and Ravings Of A (Formerly) Mad Mailman.

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Manny Ramirez is a man of great courage. He has retired from baseball rather than allow Major League Baseball to unjustly suspend him for 100 games.

Major League Baseball announced on April 8, 2011 that Ramirez has been forced to retire in order to avoid addressing a drug “issue” raised by the league. In its usual fashion, MLB has refused to identify the substance it has accused Ramirez of using.

Manny is no dummy. By retiring, he avoided having MLB formally announce that he’d violated the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program.

The greatest offensive player of his era tested positive for a female fertility drug that is used to restore testosterone production to normal levels during spring training in 2009. The substance, human chorionic gonadotropin, had been banned by MLB. In May of that year, Ramirez was suspended for 50 games.

The banning of human chorionic gonadotropin, which is used to trigger testosterone production in individuals whose testes no longer are functional, assumes that the cause of the testes not working properly is steroid use. Of course, there are other causes. What arrogance by MLB.

Ramirez followed his doctor’s orders. He acquired a prescription for luteinizing hormone (LH) and human chorionic gonadotropin, He did not know that MLB had banned the hormones, which explains why he never applied for a therapeutic exemption.

This is not a case of, as those who enforce the laws claim, “ignorance is no excuse.” In this instance, it is an accurate explanation.

In his statement to the media when he learned about the suspension, Manny stated:

“Recently I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was okay to give me. Unfortunately, the medication was banned under our drug policy. Under the policy that mistake is now my responsibility. I have been advised not to say anything more for now. I do want to say one other thing; I’ve taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons.”

The Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program is a joke from a scientific perspective.

The human pituitary gland produces human growth hormone (HGH), which affects growth in youngsters and muscle development. It is, and this cannot be emphasized enough, a naturally occurring substance that is essential.

At about the age of 30, the production of HGH starts to decline, which is part of the aging process.

The first biosynthetic growth hormone, which is produced using recombinant DNA technology was approved as safe and effective for use in growth hormone deficient children by the Food and Drug Administration in October of 1985. What could be better than FDA approval?

There are many negative psychosocial results of children being “too short.” Without elaborating, it suffices to state that many of those children are treated with HGH.

If an adult, with a physician’s approval, takes HGH, it is her right and it is nobody’s business except for the doctor and her patient.

Yes, MLB is a private cartel and can dictate rules that are not based on science or common sense.

We don’t know what banned substance Ramirez allegedly used this past spring. According to MLB, he violated the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program.

Forget Manny for a second. The fact that MLB has banned a hormone that the human pituitary gland produces is as inconsistent as it gets.

Research studies have concluded that in young people, exercising increases HGH production, but its effectiveness decreases with age. MLB approves wholeheartedly of exercising.

Ah, if Manny and others had only exercised more.

References:

Manny Ramirez Retires

Manny Ramirez Suspended for 50 Games

Human Growth Hormone

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April 8th, 2011, a day that will live in infamy. It’s the day Manny Ramirez officially decided to hang up the spikes. 

This is neither a time to complain about Manny’s faults nor a time to debate just how much Manny’s legacy has been affected—it’s a time to appreciate the career of one of the most feared right-handed hitters to ever step foot into a major league batting box.

There was a time when you literally couldn’t pitch to this guy. RBI was his middle name.

His 165 RBI in 1999 was the most by a player since Hank Greenberg had 183 in 1937. He thrice topped 140 RBI in a season, topped 100 RBI 12 times, and only once played more than 130 games in a season without topping 100 RBI.

Manny hit 555 home runs in his career, walked 1329 times, hit over .300 11 times and finished his career at .312/.411/.585/.996 (average/on-base/slugging/OPS).

However, for all the numbers that Manny put up in his stellar career, it was never numbers that made him great. It was what made him different.

He always played the game with a smile on his face. Always. He would strike out and walk back to the dugout smiling. He would drop a fly ball, and then he would smile. 

And there’s something to be said about somebody who doesn’t take the game too seriously. 

He was truly a joy to watch and was always good for a laugh. 

He once caught a fly ball, jumped, found the one Red Sox fan in the crowd (it was a road game), gave him a high-five, threw the ball back in and doubled the man off first. 

Another time, he cut off a throw from fellow outfielder Johnny Damon on a David Newhan ball in the gap, leading to an inside-the-park home run.

He also skipped a visit to the White House after the World Series, made a phone call during the middle of a game (on his cell phone), took a bathroom break in the middle of a game and actually missed a pitch, made a song about getting high his walk-up song and told the Red Sox, “Gas is up and so am I,” when asked about his future before free agency.

Yes, it’s safe to say Manny Ramirez was an interesting fellow, but he was also a lovable one.

And while everybody else is bitching about how he cheated and how he tainted his legacy, just think about the man whose pine-tar-glazed helmet and signature dreadlocks made you smile for the last 19 years—I know I’ll never forget. 

Cheers to one of the greatest pure hitters of this quarter century. Have fun in Spain.

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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.

But it was also a career mired in controversy.  After serving as one of the cornerstones of the team that finally brought a championship back to Boston in 2004, and then brought another in 2007, it was revealed to all the world that Manny had tested positive for steroids back in 2003, then did it again in 2009.

And Manny truly goes down in a blaze of glory: it has been revealed that Manny retired on Friday in lieu of going through a painful suspension and appeal process in conjunction with a second positive steroids test, one which would have resulted in a 100 game suspension.  

In his final act, Manny makes it impossible for us to love, or pretend to think that steroids did not play a significant role in his career.

Let’s take a look at the 25 greatest right handed hitters of all time, a list that Manny makes, steroids or no.

Unfortunately, I do not think the Hall of Fame will be so forgiving. 

Begin Slideshow

Mad Magazine should feature Manny Ramirez on their covers. He’s one of the original Boston Red Sox Idiots. And, now we have confirmation he is crazy as a Looney Toon.

Imagine having been banned once for 50 games for using a forbidden substance, and then to use the proverbial putative something again.

Imagine being so stupid that you are caught once more with hormones, steroids or the creeping crud inside you.

The threat of a 100-game suspension and humiliation is a great motivator toward retirement.

The motto of Manny Being Manny rivals only the other imbecile’s mantra: ”What, me worry?”

Don’t worry, Manny. Be happy. Your career is in the garbage dump and your miscue is now beyond rescue. You just flushed 500 home runs down the poop chute.

Some people get ulcers, and others give them. If Manny is ulcerated, it is only along his medulla oblongata.

If using drugs and steroids will fry your brain, Manny may have fricasseed frontal lobes. He is clearly out to lunch.

He’s sniffed too much pine tar resin, raising the count higher than 3 and 2. He makes the other former Red Sox brainiac, Roger Clemens, look like a rocket scientist.

Enablers took him in at the Los Angeles Dodger Disneyworld, and he took them in, though it’s doubtful they realize it.   After all, Los Angeles created Manny-wood, a fantasy home where he could live out his delusions for a few more years.

Manny has always belonged in Mudville, where his slime-riddled career can be appreciated.

Now, the reality show we call life may be intruding too much. There will be no return to Boston, giving fans a chance for their much-needed catharsis on Monday.

If you were to ask Manny about Cooperstown, his legacy or fan respect, he would look at you blankly. These are words that he never can define and are outside the drug user lexicon.

Words in his vocabulary are limited to vanity, and the rest of his meager, but benighted diction belongs in a rather thick-skinned dictionary he and Barry Bonds have compiled.

The first word that neither has comprehended may well be “comeuppance.” Guilty parties often get it sooner or later.

After being hit with a proverbial ton of steroid slime-balls, Manny will slide under the bombardment that would assault the ego of a lesser maroon idiot.

The Mighty Manny has struck out, and we can only say good riddance.

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Get ready, folks, for the other pink sox to drop.

Remember back in 2004 and 2007 when practically everybody not working for Everybody’s Sox Patriots Network (including many who only days ago were yet again spewing the “best team ever” Red Sox spin) were publicly broaching the issue of drug testing for Manny, his longtime roommate Papi and some of their other bloated Beantown buddies?

(Try Google Archive if your memory needs a jolt.)

Anybody who believes this clown was bending over all alone taking the juice up his back door in that lineup through those years ought to be tested themselves…for mental illness.

Sorry, Beantowners, but the Babe is the ONLY big guy you ever had who won a ring without juicing.

Oh and by the way…before you 1-7 whiners hit back with the A-Rod card, I leave you with three thoughts:

1) He didn’t juice with the Yankees;

2) It wasn’t illegal when he did it with the Rangers; and

3) when he was hit with the rumor, he manned up and fessed up, unlike the lying sacks of scuzz like Ortiz, Manny and everybody else in that Boston lineup who lied then and are still lying to this day.

Prediction: Manny’s next move is a Canseco-styled Sheen-esque tell-all whine shredding the whole scruffy happy miraculous lovable idiot Boston myth into confetti.

Remember, you read it here first.

That said, let’s play ball. The Rays won their first game without the Manny luggage, and the Sox only have to win six more to get to .500.

God is watching, and he’s keeping score.

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We’re still waiting for the details to come out, but what we know may be enough.

Manny Ramirez, the greatest right-handed hitter of our generation, got caught. Drug policy violation. Having violated the performance-enhancing drug policy in 2009, he was set to be punished. Again.

So what did he do? He retired. He didn’t stick around for the judgment. Can you blame him?

He was out of solutions, out of time, out of a way to get out of the mess. Hey, it’s just Manny being Manny.

He violated the drug policy. Everyone knew what that meant from the start. Drugs meant cocaine in the ’80s. They mean steroids now. It’s the culture.

That’s the question. Was it routine? Was Manny in a position where he had to cheat to stick around, to stay feared at the plate? Was doing steroids no longer a question of morality, but a point of necessity?

If Manny talks, he can try to spin it. He might even try to charm us again. Hey, it’s just Manny being Manny.

It’s not going to work.

Manny has a problem on his hand. Plenty of sluggers have gotten busted. That just speaks of the desire to get an edge. It’s wrong, yes, but so widespread that it’s hard to fight the ho-hum feeling we get when we learn of the latest dirty 50-home-run hitter.

Twice? That speaks of the need to get an edge. There’s a difference.

Barry Bonds’s supporters can argue he didn’t need steroids. So can Sosa’s. And McGwire’s. The list goes on and on. Those guys used, yes, but they didn’t have to. It’s an argument based on opinion, but it’s an argument that supporters make.

Manny was in that group. He isn’t anymore. He was wearing the scarlet “S”, but it’s the scarlet “2”, as in second offense, that’s the bigger weight to bear.

Perception, fairly or not, can outweigh reality when it comes to the Hall of Fame and a place in baseball history. And the perception is, and will be, that a player who’s been caught and does steroids or performance-enhancers again is someone who knows how much he has at stake, and cheats anyway.

Someone who has to, in other words.

Manny’s legacy spoke volumes by itself. He was the last man a pitcher wanted up at the plate in a key moment for more than a decade.

Now we’ll wonder. We’ll question how much of that is real, because we can’t forget a second time. We can’t forget the thought of a career made, not just aided, by performance-enhancers.

We can’t help but wonder if it really did become Manny being Manny.

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The career numbers are staggering.

.312 batting average (87^th all-time)

555 homeruns (14^th all-time)

1,831 RBI (18^th all-time)

2,574 hits (82^nd all-time)

547 doubles (24^th all-time)

1,544 runs (56^th all-time)

1,329 walks (36^th all-time)

4,826 total bases (26^th all-time)

.411 on-base percentage (32^nd all-time)

.585 slugging percentage (9^th all-time)

2,302 games (102^nd all-time)

1994 Rookie of the Year

12-time All-Star

2-time World Series champion

World Series MVP

2002 AL batting champion

2 Hank Aaron Awards

9 Silver Slugger Awards

Any baseball fan will tell you these are Hall of Fame stats.

Prior to the 2009 season, I would’ve said Manny Ramirez is a first ballot Hall of Famer. Then, in May of his first full year with the Los Angeles Dodgers, news came of the 50-game suspension following a positive test for a female fertility drug. While steroid use was unconfirmed, the banned substance present in his system is typically used as a steroid masking agent.

Clearly a blemish to his image, it probably wouldn’t have been enough to deter the baseball writers from voting him into the Hall. After all, Ramirez had spent just short of two decades making a mockery of pitchers on his way to becoming one of the most feared and revered hitters in baseball history.

After an injury-riddled 2010 season, Ramirez hoped to revive his career when he signed a one-year deal with the Tampa Bay Rays. He showed flashes of his old self during spring training and seemed primed for a comeback.

Ramirez got off to a slow start in 2011, going just 1-for-17 with a single RBI over the first five games. According to Rays manager Joe Maddon, he was given the day off Thursday to tend to a “family matter.”

With all signs pointing to a Friday return against the White Sox, Ramirez instead stunned the sports world this afternoon with a retirement announcement resulting from a positive preseason drug test for performance enhancers. As a 100-game suspension loomed, Ramirez opted to inform Major League Baseball of his decision to hang it up rather than exacerbate a season in which he was already getting off on the wrong foot.

Although no punishment was served, a 2009 New York Times report pegged Ramirez to a list of notable superstars who had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in an anonymous test administered by the league in 2003.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s three strikes, and we all are aware that in baseball and in life, three strikes and you’re out.

Merely hours ago, Ramirez was still a shoe-in for an iconic spot in Cooperstown. Now, he joins a growing lineup shunned by the game they once did so much to enhance.

It may be just another case of Manny being Manny, but this time his antics cost him what every young player dreams of—baseball immortality.

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History will remember Manuel Aristides (Onelcida) Ramirez as follows:

“He wasn’t the ‘best’ slugger of the Steroid/PED Era – but he was the last of them.”

A-Rod’s juicing days have been over for a few years. Although other marginal players struggling to get to or stay in the big show will continue to try and cheat the system, there are simply no “good” juicing dinosaurs left playing.

Now that Manny has evaded capture, that is.

Ramirez finishes his major league career fifth on MLB‘s Steroid/PED homer list, and 14th all-time—seven 4-baggers better than non-juicer Mike Schmidt. Schmidt also retired during the regular season, but that’s where the comparison between the two ends—in all respects.

In 1989, Schmidt realized that he had physically declined to a point where he could no longer help his Phillies and that it was time for a new beginning for his teammates. In 2011, Ramirez continued to juice despite his Strike One 50-game suspension two years ago.

Not willing to serve his pending Strike Two 100-game suspension and deciding that the required rehabilitation wasn’t worth his time, Ramirez left his winless Tampa Bay Rays without his services. Rays manager Joe Madden tweeted today that the surprise announcement “…is a galvanizing moment for us.”

The only question left to ask is: Seven years from now, what cap will Manny Ramirez be wearing when he fails to earn the required votes to stay on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot?

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There will not be a Chicago reunion tonight for Manny Ramirez, who played for the White Sox in the final two months of last season. He decided to retire after he reportedly tested positive for steroids.

Ramirez will face criticism for bailing out on the Rays and being busted for steroids.

That’s fair, but let’s not express sympathy for the Rays, either. They knew what they signed up for with Ramirez.

This signing did not make sense. For one thing, he tailed off last year when he did not produce for the Dodgers and the White Sox.

Second of all, he is 38 years old, so to expect him to give the team anything was short-sighted.

They were better off signing Vladimir Guerrero, who is playing well for the Orioles. They wouldn’t be in a mess on offense if he were there.

The Rays hoped he would be decent enough to get base hits, but he couldn’t even do that.

He finished his Rays career by going 1-for-17. Now, that’s ending a career with a whimper.

Something was up when Ramirez did not play yesterday afternoon. He took a personal day in the Rays’ 5-1 loss to the White Sox. That came after he was benched in Wednesday afternoon’s game against the Angels at Tropicana Field.

Maybe something should have been up when Joe Maddon benched his petulant player.

The thought was the Rays manager wanted to find someone that can provide a spark on offense, but it turned out he and the organization knew about what was going to happen with the troubled player, which is why he did not play.

The news shouldn’t affect the Rays. They won’t miss him. After all, he was doing nothing. If guys are affected about the news, shame on them. They should concentrate on how to snap out of their hitting slump.

Ramirez’s departure should help them, actually. This means the Rays don’t have to see Johnny Damon’s follies at the outfield. He would be the team’s everyday designated hitter, and that would mean Sam Fuld would play every day.

At least, Fuld would give them better offense than Ramirez would. He is one of only few hitters who is producing for the Rays.

It is a good thing this happened now, rather than later. Eventually, if Ramirez continued to be a bust, he would have been a pain in the rear end.

He would have started acting defiant, and he would not run out groundballs. He would be a bad influence on the team’s young players.

It turned out he became a problem child right out of the chute. He used steroids with the hope he would be productive.

If he was caught, he could walk away from the game, and that’s what he did. It says a lot about his character.

He could not care less what he did. He has always been himself, if one looks at his narcissistic act in Cleveland and Boston. 

Just because he claimed he was a new man in his introductory Rays press conference, it didn’t mean he was going to live up to his word. 

At one point, he was going to pull this act. The thought was he was going to do this in June. It turned out he did it early this year, and that wasn’t surprising.

This was not going to end well one way or another. If anyone thought it would be a fairy tale ending, that person was delusional.

Either he was going to force his departure or the team was going to release him in May after a poor performance.

His departure should be viewed as a matter of indifference. Let’s hope the national media doesn’t publicize this.

There are other athletes worth talking about than a guy who was an embarrassment to sports.

As for the Rays, they should be criticized for taking this risk. When no teams made a concerted effort to sign the guy, that should have been a sign that he was not worth it.

This move was all about the Rays front office trying to show they know more baseball than others.

Make no mistake. If Ramirez panned out, they would be the first to tell everyone how they knew he could do things.

Don’t rip on Ramirez for what he did. That’s par on the course for him.

Put the criticism where it really belongs, which is on Andrew Friedman for experimenting on Ramirez.

They reap what they sowed with this failed experiment.

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