I HATE MANNY RAMIREZ

On Steroids, Character, and Heroes
By Mark Noth

A few months ago I wrote an op-ed about steroids in baseball. I noted that it seemed that Major League Baseball was finally moving past the “lost years” of the steroid age. New stars, I said, have begun to replace the fallen names of the past. I didn’t know if I was right, but I hoped I was because baseball and America, I explained, are “inextricably linked.”

Today, the league announced that yet another of its mighty stars has fallen victim to the steroid plague—Manny Ramirez.

Ramirez, a twelve-time all-star and the 2004 World Series MVP, entered his fifteenth season on the senior circuit in 2009. He has hit 533 career home runs and won two World Series. He is, or was, a shoe-in for the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, NY.

Like the players caught before him, like the players who have yet to test positive, who are doing whatever they can to avoid being caught, Manny Ramirez disgusts me.

Ramirez earned close to $19 million dollars last season. His cumulative earnings—not including bonuses or endorsements—are $162 million dollars. I doubt that I am the only one repulsed.

Do I wish I could make $19 million dollars to play a season with Los Angeles Dodgers? Hell yes! I would do it for free. But that’s not why he disgusts me. He disgusts me because he and his fellow roid-rats are dream killers. Honest, hardworking players will never even get a shot because they have too much dignity to cheat — players I know.

Derek Wiley is a senior baseball player here at Belmont University. Along with being one of the Bruin’s emotional leaders, Wiley is also one of the team’s top performers on the field. For the second straight season, he leads the Bruins in home runs, with 16. Wiley is also the Atlantic-Sun Conference’s all-time career leader in home runs–the Hank Aaron of Atlantic-Sun baseball, if you will. I have had the privilege of playing with Wiley for three years. I have seen him launch balls so far you can’t even see them land. Last year he hit a 450-foot bomb clear over the batters-eye at Vanderbilt—into the wind. Wiley drops bombs, but he also steps up when the game is one the line. Last May, he hit three home runs in just four games at the A-Sun tournament in Deland, Florida.

Wiley stands 6’3” and weighs 235 pounds. His power and size are a rare commodity in college baseball. Fifty years ago, no, twenty years ago, they might have been a commodity in Major League Baseball too, but not anymore. Today he is a dime a dozen.

Last year the Oakland A’s drafted Wiley in the 50^th round of the June Major League Baseball players draft. If you do the math, you note that around 1500 players were drafted before him. I’m sure another team will draft Wiley this June, but I doubt he will go significantly higher. Why? It’s definitely not because he doesn’t have the talent; he does. It isn’t because he doesn’t work hard enough; he arguably works harder than any player on the Bruins. Then why? Why won’t he be drafted higher? Why isn’t Wiley a shoe-in for the pros?

Wiley won’t go higher because he has character. If Derek took steroids he’d probably have a much better shot at making it to the Major Leagues. I bet he’d make it and be a hero; but twenty years from now, he wouldn’t be able to look himself in the mirror.

Disgust doesn’t even seem like a strong enough word. Repulsed? No. Hate. Precisely.

I hate Manny Ramirez. I hate him because five years from now I’ll run into Derek somewhere–maybe at a reunion or a wedding–and we’ll talk. We’ll talk about his wife and kids. We’ll reminisce about games long passed. Then we’ll talk about our jobs.

When that day comes, if I have to hear all about his job at some corporate accounting firm, I know I am going to vomit. I know this because he has the talent to play professionally. The scientists, managers, commissioners, and players who haven’t had the guts to put a stop to steroids will have killed his dream.

Ramirez will serve a fifty game suspension and all will probably be forgotten because America doesn’t really seem to care anymore. The degradation of morals marks our time. Success is ill defined. Our heroes have no character. Our corporate executives have no stomach. Our politicians are self-serving. Our hearts are corrupt.

I take it back. Wiley doesn’t have to make it to the Major Leagues; he’s already a hero. Ramirez doesn’t deserve to lick the dirt off Derek’s spikes.

Mark Noth is junior Political Science major.