Matt Welch to Talk With WBAL's Ron Smith About Manny Ramirez's Drug Suspension

May 7, 2009

Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch will be on Baltimore's WBAL 1090 at 5:35 EDT talking about the big (and possibly even funny) baseball news of today. You can listen to a live feed here.

Comments

SpongePaul|5.7.09 @ 5:28PM|#

according to agent scott boras, he did not fail because of a PED he failed due to a doctors prescrption, yeah, sure, his agent says that, lol

|5.7.09 @ 5:33PM|#

Supposedly he tested positive for a male enhancer that just happens to also be used by steroid users trying to keep their nuts from turning into peas.

Gas isn't up, and neither is Manny, I guess.

|5.7.09 @ 5:36PM|#

That explains a lot. It's hard to run out ground balls when you're in the middle of a four-hour erection.

jtuf|5.7.09 @ 5:57PM|#

The trouble with drug tests, is they only prove that a drug was in your system. They don't prove that you knew the drug was in your food.

|5.7.09 @ 6:21PM|#

I've always been pro-steroids in sports. These guys place unusual demands on their bodies, and if the use of these substances can result in longer, healthier and better careers, as a fan of those sports I'd want more of them, not less.

|5.7.09 @ 7:00PM|#

Surprised he didn't say it was just Manny being Manny.

DHS Thinks I\'m a Terrorist|5.7.09 @ 7:32PM|#

This is the result of living in a Manny State.

|5.7.09 @ 7:44PM|#

Voros,

Are you the Voros McCracken inventor of DIPS?

If so when you worked for the Red Sox was their any indication Manny was doing this stuff?

Long Time Red Sox Fan

|5.7.09 @ 7:55PM|#

I've always been pro-steroids in sports.

I totally agree. If the numbers are what count, it's not fair to compare:
- guys who have trainers with college degrees in anatomy & physiology,
- guys who've had Lasik procedures,
- guys who fly in airplanes instead of sleep on buses and trains,
- guys who can have arthroscopic surgery,
and
- guys who guys who can view hours of video tape to learn a pitcher's style and tendency

to the players in the past who didn't have any of that.

Quite frankly, I can't figure out why steroids are so different than any of those other advances that today's players take advantage of.

Voros McCracken|5.7.09 @ 8:19PM|#

lc,

Do you think it's possible there's another "Voros McCracken" out there? :)

For starters, my involvement with the Red Sox wasn't of the type that I'd generally know about something like this. IOW, anything the media couldn't get wind of, I was unlikely to get wind of it either. There were a few confidential pieces of info that I had, but almost all of those eventually made it to the press eventually.

I knew nothing about Manny's potential use of PEDs, but then I really didn't know anything about Jeremy Giambi's either. Without drug test results (confidential during the first half of my tenure), it was generally the same situation as everyone else: suspicions of some players but no real evidence.

We did try to unload Manny's contract once (we placed on him on waivers in the hopes the Yankees would bite), but I'm assuming that was a combination of his high salary, poor defense and sketchy general behavior more than any suspicions of steroids.

|5.7.09 @ 8:27PM|#

Pi Guy,

And of course in the other direction, Babe Ruth routinely faced pitchers who had been taught "dead ball era pitching strategy" which involved 75 MPH fastballs over the heart of the plate with no one on base.

Hank Aaron played during a time where well over half the league were on amphetamines.

Sandy Koufax pitched back when groundskeepers often made pitching mounds nearly twice as high as today's limit.

And that doesn't even begin to touch on the ways of changing population numbers, demographics, expansion, the introduction of foreign players (and so on) can effect how and at what level the game of baseball is played at.

Records are always broken under conditions that made it easier to do so. Pretending there's some sort of "sanctity" to any of them is stupidity.

M.S|5.7.09 @ 8:49PM|#

Who gives a fuck---seriously?

Like this is the biggest issue we have to worry about, with Obama forcing through New Deal/Great Society II?

BakedPenguin|5.8.09 @ 4:40AM|#

MS - ever occur to you that we might want to read about this as a diversion from NewDeal2.0?

Also, why do people (not just MS, this is all too common) feel the need to bitch about the "necessaryness" of any given thread. You see the headline, you can usually figure out what it's about from that and / or the first sentence. If it doesn't interest you, don't fucking read it.

Randy|5.8.09 @ 10:24AM|#

Other changes in baseball that don't seem to bother the "not fair to the players in the past" crowd -- switching to lighter bats.

Up until the 1980's, it was conventional wisdom that to generate real power at the plate, you had to use as heavy a bat as you felt comfortable swinging. Then in the 1980's, bat speed became the emphasis in generating power. Before the 80's, power hitters typcally used bats weighing 36 oz. or more, some over 40 oz. I recall that Ritchie Allen used a 44 oz. bat. Now all the big guys use 32 and 34 oz. bats.

Imagine what Ruth, Aaron, Mays, etc. could have done had they known about the advantages of bat speed over bat weight.

Randy|5.8.09 @ 10:42AM|#

Regarding the pitching mound and heighth. Prior to 1969, the pitching mound was 18 inches high.

In 1969, it was lowered to 12 inches, taking away a siginificant advantage for the pithcers. This action was prompted by the dominance of pitchers like Koufax, Drysdale, and Bob Gibson, who posted a 1.12 ERA for the season in 1968.

This particular rules change doesn't seem to upset the "not fair to the players in past" crowd either. Evidently, consistency is not their hallmark... LOL