Manny, Oh Manny

The sound you heard Thursday was the sound of cars veering off the freeway, jaws scraping the floor, and eyes popping out of sockets of sports fans everywhere.

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised anymore, but the news of Manny Ramirez receiving a 50 game suspension was enough to catch my attention, and bring a brief moment of sadness.

For those of us, who have followed baseball since a young kid, we now are faced with the realization that many of our favorite stars were cheating by using performance enhancing drugs that didn't start with a V.

As yet another star falls from grace, we are left with lingering questions, what about Pujols, what about Ryan Howard, David Ortiz, Jim Thome.....the list can go on, because there really isn't an innocent until proven guilty quality about players that played in the "steriods era".

On a side note, I've always had a fondness for Manny Ramirez, as my wife and I visited Fenway Park during his first year with the Red Sox. While we were not Red Sox or Manny fans, it was easy to feel the excitement the crowd had, every time he came to the plate, and the "Manny! Manny!" chants that erupted when he hit a double. For the boxscore from that game, click here (baseball-reference.com is a wonderful place).

So now, like we will be dealing with for the next several years, we're left with sorting through the aftermath of another messy steriods-use admission.