No need to beat around the bush there are only two possibilities to this Manny Ramirez 50 game suspension:
1- Manny is completely innocent and it was the doctors fault for giving him a prescription with a banned substance in it.
2- Manny is a lot smarter than we give him credit for, was trying to be slick and got caught.
If history tells us anything while I would like to believe Manny he is probably lying. It was a much funnier story if he was just a two minute brother and needed a little pick me up, but as information comes out it was a "Women's fertility" drug that is known to be used by steroid users.
You know how I feel about the subject I don't care if they take steroids or not. I don't think it makes you a better player, but as a baseball player you have to know they are not playing around anymore.
You can't be on steroids and assume you aren't going to get caught.
I will say this is different than ARod, Bonds, McGwire and etc. When they did steroids there wasn't a drug policy in place so in my mind they shouldn't be looked upon negatively at all, because there were no rules in place. Manny knew the rules and broke them. To me that makes him open to more criticism than any player in the past.
It is one thing to cheat when there are no rules. It is another thing to cheat when there are. Unfortunately for Ramirez he can't chalk this up to:
50 games? That's over 7million dollars. Oh well. And Robert, any steroid user is a cheater. I hear what you are saying about the rules being in place then as opposed to now, but even if I do give Bonds a pass for the steroids, there is still that small matter of him dressing in drag for the press conference. Are he and Rodman cool or something?
Well, he wasn't gettin the long term contract anyway, but he definitely ain't gettin it now.