Thursday, May 07, 2009

Manny suspension

Some initial thoughts on the Manny suspension:

  • I’m a bit disgusted by the perverse pleasure people seem to be taking in Manny’s suspension. I’m also disgusted by the ESPN pundits who get to pretend, self-righteously, to be profound about the sanctity of the sport and damage done to baseball.
  • If there is a contemporary athlete who I’m willing to grant is clueless enough to violate the MLB drug policy in an innocent way, Manny’s the guy. Part of Manny Being Manny is that he’s totally a loon who doesn’t pay attention to anything except hitting. Suddenly it’s not believable that he’d be stupid enough to take a prescribed drug without checking with team doctors or the union? That’s totally in keeping with Manny’s character.
  • I’m ignorant about the legitimate uses of hCG, the drug Manny reportedly took. Apparently, it’s connected to fertility treatments. If this was as innocent as Manny claims it is; then he needs to come totally clean about this “personal medical issue.” If he wants to clear his name, he needs to produce the medical records that show he has a condition that hCG is used to treat. Moreover, medical documentation, if possible, that this condition was not something caused by the use of steroids or some other PED in the first place.
  • Even if Manny’s use of hCG was for performance-enhancing (of the baseball kind), what he did to get out of his contract in Boston was way worse.

1 comment:

Patrick Stephens said...

It's becoming increasingly clear that everyone in baseball took steroids. Every single All-Star from 1975 through 2005 is suspect. Every. Single. One.

It's my understanding that these drug prohibitions are written like all other prohibitions. The substance is banned, regardless of whatever justification there may be for the athlete to use it.

Olympic gymnasts have been disqualified for taking a single sudafed before competition. Football players have suffered multi-game suspensions for taking prescribed asthma medication.

This is where we're headed. The institutional paranoia will seep down to college and high school and in five years, 15 year-old kids with allergies or asthma will be effectively banned from playing inter-scholastic sports.

I don't particularly care about Manny's suspension, but the self-righteous, hypocritical blithering of viagra-popping, lexapro swilling, lipitor sucking pundits and politicians sickens me.