Manny Ramirez Retires. Quits. Whatever, He's Done.

But it may not be a matter of users in, non-users out. It could be that a certain level of greatness gets in no matter what. That is how you justify some users getting in and some not.

Also, as I mentioned, there seems to be an almost universal belief that Bonds was a Hall of Famer before he started using. That is not the case with Sosa or McGwire.

 

It just shows, once again, that the whole sport is a damn cesspool.

 

What sport isn't these days?

 

Manny quitting is like a player on Butler on Butler missing a wide open jumper in the final game.

 

Go away child, just go away.

 

I don't care if they took steroids. I don't care if they're assholes. I don't care if they're morons. They are baseball players, not moral compasses. I watch baseball for the baseball. I find who is in and who is not in the Hall of Fame a sillier notion than Fantasy Baseball. I don't need a bronze plaque sitting in that tiny tourist trap of a town totell me who was truly great and who wasn't.

Maybe Manny should have found Jesus. That would've made it all right, I guess. Made the tattoos more palatable. Would've gotten him a Rick Reilly special, maybe. Maybe he should've retired while Boston was still conveniently ignoring all the baggage because he was popping them over the Monster.

Someday baseball HOF voters will realize that no one outside their fraternity gives a fuck what they think. Until then, maybe we should start a Hall somewhere the actual best players are. Where Jackson, Rose, Tim Raines, Bonds and Manny are celebrated for their accomplishments, not banished for their human failings (or the sheer stupidity of the voters in Raines' case) while Cobb is slipped in the back door because he lived before handheld recording devices were invented and Mazeroski is somehow good enough and Bert Blyleven is given a made-up moniker of "NOT WINNING THE CLOSE GAMES" out of thin air.

Manny Ramirez was the greatest hitter I've ever seen before Fenway's odd dimensions turned him into a pull hitter. When he was hitting the ball to right center in Cleveland, it was impossible to pitch to him. Before he was put in the fishbowl that is Boston, he was a quiet, goofy hitting savant who actually played pretty good defense. And with Belle, Lofton, Baerga, Thome and Alomar to take the spotlight he was left to simply hit.

And, oh God, could the guy hit.

The rest to me is background noise with which I'm not all that concerned.

In 100 years, no one will remember the hair or the pouting or the steroids. They'll see that Manny Ramirez drove in 165 runs in 1999 and hit .351 in 2000...with power.

Three fifty-one. While hitting 38 home runs.

Much like Bonds, anyone who saw him swing knows he was a HOF with or without the steroids. Which makes the choice to use them all the more tragic. Some guys just should be in because they were that good. Bonds, Rose and Manny belong in that category.

Manny Ramirez will always be better known and more celebrated than Andre Dawson as a player, no matter the lack of a plaque.

 

Brian, I am a Hall voter, as you may know, and it is my opinion that as time passes, there will be less outraged moralizing about the PED Era by the baseball world, as it will be more accepted that EVERYBODY was using them, so we can't just pick on a few talented scapegoats. IMO, the Bonds vote, which comes well before Manny is eligible, will be the crucible. If guys vote for him, and they will, how can they not vote for other players because those players used PEDs? That'd be too much hypocrisy even for baseball.

 

Someone made the point on this thread, and I think it's a good one, that we don't catch every drug dealer or murderer or rapist, either.

But we can still punish the ones we do catch.

I think that's a principle that largely carries over. But to your points, Nomar Garciaparra, of all people, who probably wasn't clean himself, made a good point yesterday when I heard him on a radio segment. He wondered why we can put people in the Hall of Fame, but we can't take them out later (like Reggie Bush with his Heisman or Calipari with his Final Fours). I think that would assuage at least a little bit the concern that there is selectivity going on with which cheaters are in and which are out.

Also, Brian, you can trivialize anything. We've decided - fandom, American culture - that the Baseball Hall of Fame matters, much like the Academy Awards matter.

Brian, you said that in 100 years no one will remember that he took steroids. I don't know that that's true. What's the first thing you think of when it comes to East German Olympians? And that was 30-40 years ago at this point.

 

Nomar's OK, but that's about the dumbest idea I've ever heard. It would subject the Hall to endless debates on issues for which there are no answers, and can be no answers. Every nerd in SABR would be scanning small-town newspaper microfilm from eons ago to see if some guy had a domestic violence beef in 1923.
Also, please, for the sake of suffering humanity, stop equating the use of PEDs, the violation of the rule of a sport, with actual crimes. And don't bring drug laws into it. Our society's posture towards drugs has neither morality nor logic to recommend it.

 

Thank you for saying this. I don't agree 100 percent, but to say he played "pretty good defense" in Cleveland is revisionist history at its best.

 

Junkie, read the post. I specifically said I don't equate drug laws with crimes about hurting other people and stated my belief our drug laws are a crock of shit. You can't disagree with that, but don't ignore that I said it.
PS: Manny was always a poor fielder, due to his incredibly poor first step in the outfield. If given a five step running start, he would probably would have been an OK fielder.

 

Being the loser that I am, I watched or listened to every inning of Cleveland Indians baseball from 1995 to 2003. That's eight years of every inning of Indians baseball. I recorded every game on VCR and taped games on my dual cassette player in my room, with Herb Score and Tom Hamilton on the call. Still have a closet full of games on antiquated VCR playoff tapes that I need to get into digital format.

I wore a black armband to school after Game 7 in 1997. I wore red socks and pulled them up to my knees a la Manny during the 97 playoff run.

So, um, yeah, I watched some Tribe games in the 1990s.

There, I outed myself as having the worst childhood ever.

People who say Manny was the worst outfielder of all time only watched him in Boston. That said, he was pretty awful.

In my defense, Manny had a good throwing arm. He threw out tons of guys on the basepaths. Probably because he played them into singles. My childhood haze probably glosses over Manny's horrible outfielding at the time.

Or maybe Albert Belle was so awful in left field that Manny didn't look so bad in right. If you thought Manny was the worst outfielder in history, you didn't watch him in 1994, when he got good jumps and threw peas to gun down runners.

And you didn't see Albert Belle's basket catches in left that popped out of his glove 13 percent of the time.

Whatever. I'm not here to defend his defense or his tired act or his steroid use or anything else. I just think the Hall of Fame isn't worth anything if Bonds, Ramirez, Tim Raines and Pete Rose aren't in it.