Manny Roid-mirez

By Rick Morris

Well, today we found out what fuels baseball's ultimate man-child -- fertility drugs! And here we thought Johnny Damon was the only guy on those Red Sox teams with a va-jay-jay!

That he cheated and tried to duck accountability shouldn't be a great shock. Witness his previous attempts to live "above the law" in terms of team guidelines and remember that the ultimate opportunist (apologies to Adam Copeland!) Scott Boras is his agent.

With the supersonic offensive numbers posted since roids took over the game in the mid-'90s, any megastar not proven to be of the finest moral fiber is essentially guilty until proven innocent. Sorry, but that's just the way that it is. If an Albert Pujols suffers the burden of suspicion unjustly, well, then maybe he should have spoken out against his peers who forced everyone in the game to choose between taking an unfair advantage and keeping your natural life expectancy.

And in terms of who's innocent, can we put an end to the incipid "honesty depth chart" that the media seems intent on maintaining? After hearing that "Alex Rodriguez was the best clean player" and more recently, "no, Manny Ramirez was the best clean player," let's just admit once and for all the futility of this type of statement, shall we? While we're at it, the whole "Ken Griffey must have been clean because he was hurt too much to be on roids" angle isn't a credible one. Now, Griffey may not have been on roids (hopefully not), but let's not forget that Mark McGwire spent a lot of time on the DL himself.

At the same time, it's good see Selena Roberts' book tanking. Now, she did excellent journalistic work in exposing ARod, but the story itself is tiresome and reporters who come along at this stage writing about the steroid plague are essentially vampires dining on the misery of the fans. Enough already! Most of these guys cheated, and on that level anyway, aren't very good people. We get it. The salt in our wounds doesn't seem to serve a purpose beyond enriching the folks with the book contracts.

At this rate only the fat guys like Jim Thome (illicit substances: milkshakes and triple cheeseburgers) are going to be above suspicion. In a world where your average MLB superstar is bound to be ringing up Batista looking for his hookup for clean urine, the onetime national pastime remains embroiled in the scandal that just won't die.