By James Bailey
Wasn’t Manny Ramirez being punished?
As his 50-game suspension for violating baseball’s rules against performance-enhancing drugs winds down, Manny is being welcomed back as a conquering hero. Both ESPN and the MLB Network were touting live cut-ins to his rehab at-bats for Triple-A Albuquerque Wednesday night. Daily papers across the nation are devoting precious space to coverage of his tuneup games.
These, coincidentally, are the same outlets that ran volumes when he was outed as a cheat in early May.
Our society is well known for castigating celebrities—athletes, pop stars, politicians—and later forgiving them. The media loves this game. All a fallen star has to do it show a little contrition, withdraw from the public eye for X number of weeks/months (depending on the transgression) and work their way back with a couple of appearances at charity benefits, etc. (Take note, Gov. Sanford. You too will be welcomed back in time.)
So what exactly has Manny done in the last seven weeks to redeem himself? First he issued a statement through the team blaming his doctor for prescribing him banned medication. That bought him a little faux sympathy while some of the more sanctimonious columnists lectured us about jumping to conclusions. When it turned out the flagged substance was a women’s fertility drug used to help a user’s body restart production of testosterone after a steroid cycle Manny didn’t issue a correction, just slipped out of town.
A month into his suspension, during a visit to the Dodger clubhouse which later earned a scolding from the commissioner’s office, Manny told reporters: “I didn’t kill nobody, I didn’t rape nobody, so that’s it. I’m just going to come and play the game.”
Despite the obvious lack of contrition, Manny ranks sixth among NL outfielders in All-Star voting. It’s hard to take fan complaints about cheating seriously with results like that. Or when you see that Albuquerque drew a record crowd of 15,321 for Manny’s first rehab game on Tuesday. Wednesday’s crowd even booed when Nashville pitcher Tim Dillard walked the slugger on four pitches.
So the fans and media are welcoming him back, almost as if he were the victim in this affair. Sure, he’ll be treated like a villain on road trips, but overall he’s getting off pretty light. He’ll take his place in the lineup next week and within a month it will be like nothing ever happened.
Just Manny being Manny, enabled by the rest of us.
