Sometimes you really do reap what you sow.
Manny Ramirez is a blissful idiot. He’s also no one’s fool. After serving a 50-game drug suspension, Manny still maintains that he didn’t mean any harm—which would be less plausible if it weren’t such a fitting sign of the times.
Negligence means turning a blind eye to the rules.
Nihilism, on the other hand, means turning a deaf ear to the truth.
I’m not suggesting that Ramirez is clean. An innocent man never equivocates, and Manny’s fuzzy denials speak for themselves. But let’s not be too hard on No. 99. In a league where all values start with the ticket-buyer, you can’t expect a slugger to be more scrupulous than the suckers who pay his salary.
A mirror is only as pretty as the face that beholds it.
An idol is only as holy as the culture that begets it.
If we’re going to fault Manny for being Manny, we should also fault us for being ourselves.
American sports have always mirrored the American psyche. Teamwork, accountability, fair play—these are national virtues, the tenets of our civic faith. The problem, alas, is...
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