Manny Tests Positive!

Thursday May 7, 2009

Los Angeles Dodgers Left Fielder Manny Ramirez Tests Positive for a banned substance and is suspended for 50 games.

Now the weak excuses start. "My doctor gave it too me ... I didn't take steroids".

It makes you wonder why these guys think they have to lie. We know that they are juiced. Almost every great power hitter of the past decade has been juiced.

The guys now days trot out that tired old line that Manny tried to foist off today - "I’ve taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons".

Come on guys. do you really think we are all that stupid. Steroids are taken on a three week cycle and you pretty much know when you are going to be tested each year. MLB testing is not like Olympic testing where the athletes are subject to random testing all YEAR long even out of competition and may get tested a dozen times or more in season.

Major league players only get tested once in spring training and twice during the season during a home stand. If you are serious about stopping steroid and other performance enhancing drug use you have to do year round testing.

Since steroids are not fat soluble you can take them all off season and up to a few weeks or even days before the testing and still come up clean if it is a urine test, which is what MLB uses, and not a blood test.

Folks, if you were wondering why Manny Ramirez suddenly had this incredible streak of success with the bat once he left Boston in 2008, you have your answer.

Was the delay in coming into camp this year really an attempt to get the steroids he used in the off season out of his system and nothing having to do with the money?

I do have a question for Major league Baseball. In other sports a team (like a relay team in track and swimming) has to forfeit wins if one athlete is caught cheating.

Why do major league baseball teams NOT have to forfeit games when a player is caught cheating?

The guys in the locker room will do a much better job of policing the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball than you possibly can if they know that they may have to forfeit all the games after the positive test date if a team mate is caught using performance enhancing drugs.

So how about it Fehr and Selig? Are you serious about stopping steroid and performance enhancing drug use or is the drug testing you have now just a smoke screen to shut up the media and the general public?

Lets see some real year-round testing and TEAM penalties.

Then and only then will your sport be relatively free of this scourge.

I have had my say. Now what do you think.