In a strange way, it makes sense that this is how the career of Manny Ramirez comes to an end.
It's safe to say we aren't completely done dealing with the hyper-talented hitter from the Dominican Republic, but the final chapter of his big league career reads much like most of his career. It elicits a combination of head-shaking, wonderment and amusement that is so commonly summed up with the now-standard ""Manny being Manny.""
After earning a 50-game suspension in 2009 for a positive performance-enhancing drug test, Ramirez announced his retirement last week likely upon learning he was about to be suspended 100 games for another failed test.
In 2009, Manny said his positive test came as an inadvertent side-effect of an erectile-dysfunction drug he was taking. He may have problems with the language barrier like many Spanish-speaking players, but I have to imagine even Ramirez knew he served up a hanging curveball with ""performance-enhancing drug"" scrawled across it.
This time, he didn't bother with an outlandish excuse or even wait for official word of the suspension to come down. He just up and quit. It's the perfect ending for Manny. Not because he's a quitter, but because he's always cared more about the length of his locks and the depth of his pockets than about what fans think of him or what will be written in baseball's annals with regards to his reputation as a bad teammate.
This is the guy, after all, who ran himself out of Boston by completely shutting down once he grew complacent with his contract in 2008. Yeah, that contract was eight years old, but it was also worth $200 million.
Then, after getting traded to the Dodgers, he said he would become a free agent so he could see who would pay him the most. I'm all for players leveraging the system and finding maximum dollars—it's within the rules and they'd be stupid not to. However, along with that decision came quotes like, ""The price of gas is up, and so am I.""
Not to beat a dead horse, but a few months after saying he was ""up,"" he explained away a positive test by saying it was an erectile dysfunction medicine. You can't make this up.
Anyways, the Dodgers signed him for two years and $45 million—enough to get anyone up—and that was the beginning of the end.
If anybody since 1993 had the game to get away with being eccentric, sporadically engaged in the game and driven by money, though, it was ManRam.
The dude went nine seasons between 1998 and 2006 where he never hit fewer than 32 home runs, or drove in fewer than 102 runs. That includes slash lines of .333/44 HRs/165 RBI in 1999, .351/38/122 in 2000 (despite missing 45 games) and .292/45/144 in 2005.
Of course, the question is whether any of that matters now that he's tested positive for PEDs three times and—most people will presume—he's been juicing his whole career. Do his numbers count? Does he deserve to be in the Hall of Fame?
My answer is as imperfect as any, but I don't really see a problem with letting him in the Hall. Put an asterisk next to his numbers, add the number of positive tests to his plaque in Cooperstown, do whatever. But let him and the rest of the steroids-era players in if their numbers warrant it.
The Hall of Fame is baseball's historical database. I know about the disgusting numbers Babe Ruth put up, I know Reggie Jackson couldn't be stopped in the clutch and I know about Nolan Ryan's strikeout rates, but I don't have a full appreciation for their achievements because I never saw any of them play.
I've watched Manny play, and to call him a hitting machine is a compliment to machines. Same goes for Barry Bonds. Roger Clemons scared the shit out of hitters—even the ones who were also on steroids. The Hall preserves careers so future generations that never witnessed them in person can appreciate them for what they were. I don't see how this will be any different.
Manny is a career .312 hitter. He has 547 dingers to his name. By our standards, those are Hall of Fame numbers. We know the stories about Ruth being a bit of a booze hound and a womanizer just like future baseball fans will know Bonds is a pompous ass. The integrity of the game will survive if Major League Baseball lets them in. It may even give the league a chance to control the message.
All of this is not to mention the fact that we live in the 21st century, where everything is archived on the Internet. Speaking of that, check out the ""This is Sportscenter"" commercial featuring Manny and Jay Harris. You'll want him in Cooperstown, too.
Do players from baseball's steroid era like Manny Ramirez deserve a place in Cooperstown? E-mail Parker at pjgabriel@dailycardinal.com.
