On Manny Ramirez

Perfect timing. The pressure is off of A-Rod. He can come back to the line-up today and avoid the media firestorm, because now Manny Ramirez has also been caught with performance enhancing drugs. As a die hard Yankee fan, Manny has been a Hispanic thorn in my ass for the past 10 years. He broke the curse. He won two World Series with Boston, spurring them to create one of the worst phrases I've ever heard - Red Sox Nation. He's an arrogant, pompous, self-inflating ego-maniac who admittedly will play for the team that gives him the most money, even if it's the Tokyo Teabaggers. From a sports enthusiast's perspective (and near-purist) he represents everything negative about professional sports in America today. So why do I sit here, devasted over this?
For some strange reason, deep down in my heart I've always had a special place for Manny Ramirez. Of course, as described above, I have every reason to hate the guy. I should be rubbing it in every Rod Sox fans' face that yes, now it's official, Manny was juicing when the Red Sox won their titles. I should be relieved that it's not just Alex Rodriguez who has to shoulder the load of baseball's bad boy anymore. But I'm not. For some odd reason, I have always respected Manny Ramirez more than anyone else in professional sports. Why? It's two-fold: His honesty and his swing."
That's just Manny being Manny," is a phrase every baseball fan has heard. Unlike Alex Rodriguez and (God, you can send me straight to hell for this) Derek Jeter, Manny doesn't care about his image. He tells it like it is. Sure, he shoved a 60-year-old Red Sox assistant. Oh, "that's just Manny being Manny." So what if he quit on his team half way through the season last year, only to be traded and continue to go on to a devastating offensive tear right through the National League Championship Series. "That's just Manny being Manny." He doesn't care. He simply goes about his business, not caring what the world has to say about him. There is something professional and even admirable about this, in a world where image is everything and everyone sneaks around behind each other's back, making sure not to say the wrong thing to the wrong person.
From the right side of the plate, I challenge anyone to find a sweeter swing than Manny's. When Manny connects with a high hanging breaking ball and smashes it over the Green Monster, or now into the hot California breeze, it's near-perfection. They say the hardest thing to do in sports is hit a baseball, but at times, Manny made it look like he was hitting off of a tee. Manny tends to admire his work after hitting a home run a little longer than is sportingly acceptable. You would too if you could hit the ball 500 feet with the grace and artistic style of a Greek Titan.
But now, it's all for naught. Baseball was the most glorious sport of all for a guy like me. You could take your rough "manly" sports like football and hockey. I don't care about Lebron James buzzer beaters and windmill dunks. Just give me baseball. The history, the stats, the four hour nine inning games, ground-rule doubles, rally-hats, rally-monkeys, Yogiisms, Big League Chew. Americana. Since the news about A-Roid came out, I had held out hope that maybe Manny and Pujols were not on the juice. Maybe there was a shred of integrity left in my favorite pasttime. Now, Manny has become yet another racing stripe on the shit stain that is Major League Baseball. Everything about him is now false. His obnoxious, morale-killing swagger and his home runs. They're all false. This means both the feelings of hatred and love I had for Manny, have also gone by the way-side, and thus, not only has Manny been suspended for 50 games, but my boyish enthusiasm for a simply complicated game has also been suspended.
So while other Yankee fans rejoice, I have died a little bit more inside. Whether you like him or not, Manny helped define baseball for our generation, and up until now, at the very least, he was clean. As a baseball fan, I have to make a decision. Should I turn my back on a sport that has seemingly turned it's back on me? Self-admittedly, I've always been a little naive to the cut-throat world around me, and I've tried to create in my mind an environment that incubates the pure things in life, all the while denying and shunning the bad. This environment is now continuously deteriorating and the only thing that can help me is a heavy dose of NEDs: Naivete Enhancing Drugs.