Squawker Jon and I were trying to come up with an excuse – other than steroids – for Manny Ramirez to explain why he was taking human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), a female fertility drug. And we figured only Manny could – or is that Mannywood? – get away with this excuse: that he was trying to get pregnant!
We thought he could have a tearful press conference, saying about how he admired Octomom so much that he decided to get pregnant just like her. “All I wanted was to have more Manny Juniors,” he could sob. “Is that so wrong?”
Hey, it could work!
On a more serious note, can we please stop talking about how baseball’s anti-steroids program is working? Because it’s not. Two major league players failed the test in 2008, and four this year. Does anybody really believe those are the only players using performance-enhancing drugs? Come on now.
We already know that thanks to the players union, stars like Alex Rodriguez were getting tipped off in 2004 about upcoming steroid tests. Who’s to say that isn’t happening now? Or that players have just moved on to undetectable drugs like HGH?
Also, so much for the observation that Manny wasn’t juicing because he didn’t have a steroids-esque body.
And this faux naivete on the part of Joe Torre is a bit much. Didn’t he read his own book, “The Yankee Years”? Chapter 3, “Getting an Edge,” is all about steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. It was one thing for Joe to pretend to be naive about juicing 10 years ago. But given that he literally has coached more known steroid users than any other manager in history, including three of the biggest names, it’s a bit much to hear him pretend to be so shocked about Manny.
Oh, and don’t tell me Torre just heard about the test failure yesterday morning – Manny reportedly was told last month he failed. The reason it was announced Thursday is that he dropped his appeal.
One thing I was kind of surprised over was Bill Simmons’ column about the 2004 Red Sox. He speculated about which players were juicing on that team. Harsh!
Anyhow, what baseball’s anti-PED program does is provide a cover for players and owners to pretend to us rubes that they’re doing something to clean up the game. That’s all. It’s very successful at doing that. As for actually cleaning up the game, not so much.
What do you think? Leave us a comment!
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