As I woke up from my tired stupor on Thursday morning, someone sent me a text message that displayed as “Manny Roidmirez.” Then I heard the eventual news that Los Angeles Dodger Manny Ramirez was suspended for 50 games by Major League Baseball for violating its drug policy.
The story that Ramirez presented to the press was that his doctor had issued a medication for a personal issue which is believe to contain something in women’s fertility drugs called HCG which some steroid users use to restart their natural hormone process. That is believe to have caused the positive test.
At this point, this situation is really unclear since the story itself seems plausible but considering the cloud of the MLB steroid era, it would not surprise me that Manny could have juiced one year or even more in the big leagues. Ramirez was mentioned in Canseco’s book “Juiced” for possibly being a steroid user but Canseco showed no evidence that he knew Manny was juicing.
This just seem to provide another cloud over the steroid era in baseball and at this point, many records and players from that era will forever be tested to whether they used performance-enhancing substances or not. For a fan of baseball, everything is called into question and memories of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro among many others will always seem to be under “rose-colored glasses.” The legitimacy of records during that era will always be in question and many of those records will never be clean until a player we know that is clean breaks them. The irony of the fact is that people we thought were clean who we though could break the records ended up not being clean at all. (I.E. A-Rod)
Reading another story of a player who might have tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance just seems to be a bore to me again. I know that there were juicers and players who we hope did not juice in Major League Baseball but the line has become so unclear that it gets to the theory of, “Guilty until proven Innocent” How can we prove that Manny did not take steroids? Do you trust his word?
For as many times as we try to forget about that era of baseball, it keeps yielding it’s ugly head. Very sadly though, it probably will continue to do so unless we know the full truth from that era which unless we get a time-machine to proof that certain players were clean, we will never know.
Man-Ram violates MLB drug policy suspended 50 games; Steroid Era brought up again
