Monday, May 11, 2009

Final Thoughts From the Manny Bombshell

It was a typical Sunday during the baseball season. It was too rainy and gloomy to play golf (course opened yesterday!) and Blogger has this feature where you can follow other blogs, even if they come from sources other than Blogger. Which is pretty magnanimous of them. One of the blogs followed here is Rob Neyer's Sweet Spot. Mr. Neyer's posts are thought provoking if one can overlook the over-reliance at times to a numbers-only way of looking at things. His response to the PED controversy somewhat mirrors the one here. That's why it was odd when it was discovered that a new post was available at his site and once navigation there was complete, a post was read stating that PED users should never make it into the Hall of Fame because of the integrity clause. That was odd, until it was discovered that this fairly misguided post wasn't from Mr. Neyer at all, but from one Preston Gomez. While PG's analysis is rejected as flawed by this writer, a comment from another reader caught the eye. This reader basically stated (in a nutshell) that this PED problem has occurred because Latin players were allowed into the major leagues.

The Fan was quite disturbed by the double dose of sanctimonious thinking. First, Gomez presented the case that saints like Koufax, Mays and others shouldn't have their Hall sullied by the likes of A-Rod and Manny Ramirez. That argument cannot hold up as the Hall is full of flawed characters whose "sins" are widely known and too long to list. The integrity clause has been a joke since the Hall's inception.

But then this commenter put an even more disturbing point of view out there. The problem with his comment was that this was obviously a well-educated person who wrote well and presented his statements effectively. But the racism and stereotypes he presented were distasteful and scary, quite frankly. We may have Obama in the White House. We may have Hispanic and African American managers, but we still have a long way to go to get most of America to believe that "All men are created equal." But it goes beyond that. Forgive a little Bible point of view, but the Word says that, "all men are sinners and fall short of the Glory of God." None of us are perfect, we are all flawed and our only course is forgiveness (when possible).

But the disturbing part of the whole thing is that, though this person was intolerant and ignoble, there is a shard of truth in that a large part of those caught up in this PED problem are Hispanic and specifically from the Dominican Republic. The Fan has quipped rather unpoetical at times about this here in the FanDome, but it's a deep well of a problem that has yet to have a full light shone upon it. We have only seen glimpses of the problem with the firing last year of a Cleveland Indian executive and then this spring with the problems exposed in the Nationals front office.

The undercurrent here is that there has been a major pipeline of ball players that have come from the Dominican Republic. That country, though it has made amazing strides in the last two decades towards a more modern economy and political structure, still has an imbalance of wealth. Those on the less fortunate end often dream of baseball as the Holy Grail of opportunity. And a long line of major leaguers have shown the way.

The unseemly end of that is the exploitation of these players by American executives that has not fully come to light. Be sure that an investigation is ongoing and a few bombshells will be exploded along the way eventually. There is a story here that has yet to be told. Part of that exploitation has been the introduction to these players to substances that will make them stronger, train harder and be better prepared or equipped to compete for major league jobs. Without a full understanding of the current culture of testing, these players are being tripped up on a monthly basis.

Make no mistake, PED use has been a problem on all ends of the race and ethnic spectrum. For every Sammy Sosa, there is a Mark McGwire. But too many of these suspensions turn out to be for players from the Dominican Republic and there is a reason that is happening. The financial windfall of escaping poverty to reach the promised land of MLB is too exciting not to use anything anyone gives you to reach that place.

The heading of this post is a bit misleading. Manny and A-Rod are not in this category. They weren't uneducated kids from a poor country trying to find a way out. Manny is only in the heading because the news about him this week started this thought process.

In this writer's opinion, the first positive test should lead to education and strict and weekly testing. The second positive should lead to the 50 game suspension. There has to be a built in safety net to catch those who have been exploited, misled or mishandled by doctors, trainers and even stores like the GNC.

We all want the game to get clean so that we can move on to other topics, like the game itself. Even those of us who are not upset about what players ingest want to get the game clean just so we can stop having to talk about it. And it seems to be the most fair to aid those who have come to their source of chemical help by Svengalis out there exploiting a pipeline that is all too often ripe for the picking.

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