The Case for Manny's Plaque

A well known trick that every White House since the dawn of the modern news media has pulled is releasing less than stellar news on late Friday afternoons when reporters are heading out for the weekend and the news cycle is not as aggressive. Looks like Major League Baseball is employing the same tactic. On a late Friday afternoon in April, while the Red Sox and Yankees were slugging it out in Boston and Tiger was tearing through the back nine at Augusta, it was announced that on the heels of a failed drug test and facing a 100 game suspension, Manny Ramirez would retire. Manny’s sudden departure from the game brings to the forefront once again the question of how to judge and evaluate the careers of the Hall of Fame caliber players of the steroids era.

But before we get into that, let’s focus a little bit on Manny. Now that you’ve had your fill of listening to just about every baseball writer in America take their best shot at him, I think it’s important to remember just how special a player this guy was. Throughout his career, Manny made it hard for the average sports fan to wade through all of the non-baseball minutia that orbited around him and really just enjoy him as a player. Manny brought most of it on himself, of course, but underneath the 20 wristbands, baggy jersey, dread locks and overall bizarre demeanor was a man that was unlike any other superstar of his time. He was a generational talent that truly didn’t care what the rest of the world thought of him.

Until the rise of Albert Pujols, Manny was a lock to be the greatest right handed hitter of our lifetime. Historically, he will rank behind the likes of Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio, and, barring injury, Albert Pujols. That’s it. That’s the list. He was almost a genetically perfect hitter with a nearly flawless swing. No holes. Great eye. Could protect the plate. Power to both sides of the field. Hit for power and average. When Manny was locked in, it was appointment television. The beer lines at Fenway got short when Manny was on deck. In his first at bat he would rip a double down the left field line and make the pitcher reconsider trying to use the inside part of the plate. Then he would be up two innings later and slap a fastball off the outside corner of the plate thirty feet over the fence in right. There was nothing you could do when he was hot. Eventually, teams would intentionally walk him even if it meant pushing runners into scoring position.

His goofy, aloof persona only added to his aura as a hitter. Everyone threw around the term “idiot savant”. A guy who didn’t have to work on his swing; he could just show up to the ballpark an hour before game time and mash. His baggy clothes made it seem as though he never worked out, a sharp contrast to the form-fitting Cardinals jersey that seemed to do everything but rip right off of Mark McGuire’s artificially grown biceps. None of this was true, of course. Manny worked extremely hard on his swing and was every bit as ripped up as McGuire, he just wasn’t flaunting his bulging veins on national TV. Manny was just as big a cheater as every other player that used PEDs during the steroids era, which brings up two questions. (1) How do we evaluate the careers of the superstars during the steroids era against other all-time greats? and (2) Do they deserve a plaque at Cooperstown?

The worst part of the steroids era is that no one knows how to handle what little information we do have about users vs. non-users. The Hall of Fame voters have set a precedent, so far, of excluding those with known ties to steroids from Cooperstown. If the voting stays the way it has gone so far, neither Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire nor Manny Ramirez will get in. The problem, of course, is these are the guys that got caught, which does not mean that other players who will be offered admission are necessarily clean. Major League Baseball did such a poor job policing its players for such a long period of time that there will never be a fair way to determine if a player was using or not. Voting for players based off of the bits and pieces released from the Mitchell Report is ludicrous. At this point, the baseball writers association is rewarding those that were smart or lucky enough to use steroids to boost their stats and not get caught. At this point, there are only two options: Exclude the steroid era players as a whole (never going to happen) or assume just about everyone was using (they were) and judge them based on the merits of the time. Would you be happier flooding Cooperstown with the Carlos Delgados of the world whose stats seem in line with other known steroid users of the era but has never popped up on a secret list?

The reality is that Manny is probably the last of the old-guard steroid era players that will be caught red handed. Now that this era is seemingly over, it is important to provide context to this time period the same way we do others. Babe Ruth never faced a black or Latino pitcher. He also never had to face a slider; the pitch had yet to be invented. Reversing any of these factors would have hurt his stats yet we still consider him one of the greatest that ever played the game because of the way he dominated his era. That is the only way we can judge him fairly because we have no other choice. Of course Babe Ruth wouldn’t dominate today. With the amount of hot dogs he would ingest, it is likely he wouldn’t make a modern day Major League roster. But judging him against players that grew up in a fitness and nutrition conscious society is unfair, just as is locking out every player that took steroids from Cooperstown and admitting those that likely took steroids but weren’t caught under Bud Selig’s incompetent watch. Like it or not, the steroids era was Manny’s era, and while he didn’t dominate the way Ruth did, his numbers are certainly first-ballot worthy.

Major League Baseball could have controlled steroid use the same way they controlled not allowing African Americans to play with the whites during Ruth’s tenure. Management made a conscious decision to look the other way while McGuire and Sosa bashed America’s pastime back into the national spotlight. They cultivated a culture of cheating for the sake of ratings, relevance and cash-flow then acted shocked and indignant when the national media uncovered the unsightly truth layer by seemingly endless layer. With that being said, the baseball writers association has to stop turning this into a morality debate. Cooperstown cannot ignore the steroids era any more than it can the segregation era. It is a part of baseball’s history now. It absolutely is a tainted piece of history but is steroid use really more embarrassing than a league that wouldn’t allow black players anywhere near the stadium? It’s time to stop pretending this is the first era of baseball players whose stats were aided by external factors.

The morality police embedded in the baseball writers association need to take a long hard look at who is already in the hall of fame and the circumstances under which they got there before shunning players just as deserving. The reality is the steroids era was an unfortunate byproduct of a professional sports league’s desperate attempt to get back into the social conscious of America as fast as possible. If steroids had been available during any other time frame I guarantee you those players would have been just as needle happy. The insatiable desire for that competitive edge is human nature, plain and simple. I want to be able to visit Cooperstown in twenty years and not have a good portion of my baseball memories absent in time and space as if they never happened. Ignoring a low point in your history is pathetic and transparent. When you go to the Elvis museum at Graceland and the tour guide gets all the way through the part about the king's death without mentioning the mound of cocaine he ingested, do you think everyone in the crowd really buys it? Of course they don’t. Please don’t turn Cooperstown into the Elvis Museum. Put Manny in the hall.