Column: Thrifty Mets missed Manny "Manny Being Banny" Ramirez

5/7/09
manny ramirez
By Max J. Dickstein

Column: Thrifty Mets missed Manny "Manny Being Banny" Ramirez

Photo credit: Game Face

Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Manny Ramirez was suspended on Thursday for 50 games by Major League Baseball, the result of a positive test for performance-enhancing drugs. (Getty Images)

By Max J. Dickstein

Over the long winter, free agent Manny Ramirez seemed like an obvious — and hugely expensive — solution to the Mets’ offensive deficiencies in clutch situations. Here was an all-time great hitter ready to be parked in left field, one who would make the Mets prohibitive World Series favorites.

So why, we wondered, didn’t the Mets pounce when Ramirez’s negotiations with the Dodgers dragged into March?

Why indeed.

Never mind that the Mets, with Daniel Murphy and Fernando Tatis, would have had enough depth to compensate for the loss of Ramirez for 50 games (had be been caught using performance-enhancing drugs as a $45 million star for the Mets). Never mind his career .315 batting average or his 533 home runs, statistics that qualify Ramirez as one of history’s great right-handed hitters.

As the A-Rod saga has demonstrated, New York doesn’t suffer cheats well.

The twin, high-profile busts of two New York sports icons would have caused the on-field results of both teams to devolve into a kind of hysterical irrelevance. Or if it hadn’t — if either man’s transgression was succeeded by a championship that erased bitter memories — well, that would be the most cynical outcome possible.
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Column: Thrifty Mets missed Manny "Manny Being Banny" Ramirez

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