Bud Selig: “Very well, if that is the way the winds are blowing, let no one say I don’t also blow!” Baseball commissioner Bud Selig wants to keep players on drug suspensions from going to the minor leagues before they return. Manny Ramirez drew sellout crowds last month in the minors when he played two […]

I read this the first time and laughed. And then I looked up at the humorless picture at the top of the column and realized that this is no parody. Greg Doyel is Very. Very. Serious. The Home Run Derby is tonight, and it’s the perfect advertisement for baseball. Busch Stadium in St. Louis will […]

So, Marchman posts a link to a guy who claims to have a list of the 2003 drug test failures. Then Jay wonders whether Marchman posting the link is a hypocritical move based on stuff Marchman has said in the past about trafficking in this kind of stuff. I scanned through the list quickly, and […]

T.J. Simers doesn’t get all of the Manny outrage, but he’s not even pretending to be objective about it. In today’s column he fields the emails of those angry at him for being a Manny apologist. He doesn’t duck the charge at all. For him, it’s all about the entertainment factor: “Your idolatry of Manny […]

Rangers’ outfielder Marlon Byrd is either really brave, really stupid, really trusting or some combination of the three: Marlon Byrd wouldn’t be pulling down $3 million as a Major League baseball player without getting a second chance from an obscure community college after he nearly had a leg amputated more than a decade ago. So […]

TUCK! toons right here every Thursday!

Another outraged column about Manny’s rehab assignment, this one from Bill Plaschke. I’m struck by this: Manny Ramirez playing for the triple-A Albuquerque Isotopes is as weird as the word “isotope.” . . . When Manny Ramirez is old and gray and sitting outside the locked doors of Cooperstown, he might reflect on this summer […]

I think that, with this comment, J.W. gets at the core of a good third of the baseball debates that go on around here and elsewhere: I agree that Manny doesn’t deserve adulation or admiration. Neither does A-Rod (for cheating on his wife, etc.) But this brings us to a difficult question regarding entertainment. Can […]

Now if you turn your attention to the center ring, I give you Manny Ramirez, standing on his head while riding on the back of a flaming horse! Or something! Ramirez, easing back into playing shape after a 50-game drug suspension, suited up for the Albuquerque Isotopes as they beat Nashville 1-0. Ramirez wore No. […]

Ryne Sandberg thinks Sammy Sosa won’t make the Hall of Fame and believes that he shouldn’t make the Hall of Fame. I agree with the first part and, while my mind isn’t 100% made up about it yet, I’m inclined to disagree with the second part. Either way, neither Sandberg’s position on that or mine […]