Manny Being Manny No More

There are no excuses. Baseball's clueless clown can no longer claim to be the clueless fool we all took him for. Terrible baserunning mistakes...awful outfielding...even quitting on the team paying out $20 million were all chalked up to "Manny being Manny." 

Now we know Manny was smart enough to take a female hormone to cover up the side effects of steroids. He knew enough that this drug could double as a remedy to cure his "infertility." He did not know that his cutesy and dumb act would no longer be bought by the public.

If his excuse is the logical explanation, there would be a fight. Believe it. Scott Boras would not let a client shyly turn away $1, let alone $8 million. The union would not allow a player to be inaccurately suspended for an error in judgement, to cure a personal problem. There will be no fight from Manny. No fight from the union. No fight from Boras.

We will see how the sports world treats him.  How the sham of a sports network, ESPN, treats their golden boy Manny, after doing their best to destroy A-Rod for months.  Imagine if A-Rod had taken a female hormone?  Peter Gammons couldn't spit out the words fast enough. Steve Phillips, possibly the worst analyst ever hired by any network, would wait exactly one pitch into the Sunday night game to bring the conversation up.

There was a time, when you could look at players and clearly define who is on steroids and who is not. Those who claim they never could tell and were shocked by McGwire or Sosa or Bonds, or the rest of the cartoonish freaks doubling and tripling their jersey sizes in a mere year or two, should not have been covering sports. And yet some still do. The latest revelations of A-Rod and now Manny seem to have taken what little purity there was left in the game. 

What remains of baseball and the last 15 years, I'm not quite sure.

We now know the sure-fire Hall of Famers, the greats of the era, now have tainted numbers. Or do they? These players were so far superior, with such natural ability to hit and throw a ball we question why they needed a supplement.

But what lies is that their natural ability no longer made them stand out among the lower level players who were now on their level. When you are a freak of nature, a rare specimen, and you see guys who were drafted in the 45th round become greats, you have to do something to stay at your freakish natural level. 

You turn to substances that will keep you on that level. You reach a stratosphere that no players in the game had ever reached. And you remain great. The subject of water cooler talk of towering homeruns or sensational pitching performances. But when the rest of your peers are doing the same...are you still not that much better than the rest?

The rest of the world today...

The WWE, I mean the NBA, has just ruled that Kobe will be given a flagrant foul...that's all.  It must be becoming continuously embarrassing for David Stern that his gig is up.  He can no longer fix his games, his playoffs and his championships without these questions being brought up. The double standards in the rules must be addressed.

Brett Favre has announced he's not returning today. Well, that's today. Tomorrow? Who knows. I guess the Vikings want to overpay a guy who hasn't performed at the HOF level since 2000.

Another great Lost episode last night. 

Only one week left, and I have a few months to watch Joe Girardi mismanage a pitching staff like only his mentor Joe Torre could do.