Thoughts on this article by Dave Zirin.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090525/zirin

Most salient quotes:

"We should always remember that former Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush made steroid persecution a recurring theme of his time in office, as long as owners were spared the spotlight. The hypocrisy should shame owners toward contrition--but they will happily crack some golden eggs, as long as it means that the goose that laid them lives...We are supposed to tsk-tsk at players who are supposed to "just say no" to their addictions to fitness and monster stats, when their success at the park is our addiction as well. We also have yet to truly take owners to task for their addictions to public money and send them to detox."

Zirin's point is a good one, but I think it is misplaced in the case of Manny. Manny broke the rules, isn't appealing his suspension, and will sit out 50 games. It doesn't seem he was erroneously accused or that he had a good reason to use the substance he was suspended for, or that he doesn't think he was treated unfairly at all by MLB. He has been ripped in the press, but this has always been the case and much of it was due to his own actions. Lots of people don't like him, and while I think it's very unprofessional for Tim McCarver to spend 5 minutes during which he is supposed to be announcing the Red Sox - Rays game ranting about how Manny has disrespected everything he stands for and insulted his mother, that's his prerogative.

Where I think MLB and Bud Selig erred is in their treatment of things that happened in the past. It wouldn't be that difficult for baseball to say something like, "Many people made mistakes during the 'steroid era,' but we now have the strictest policy of any major sport and we are planning to set a good example for young athletes and move on with the cleanest game we can possibly have." Instead, Selig stood and watched glumly as Barry Bonds tied Aaron's record, then met with his steroids adviser when Bonds broke it. He commissioned a 409-page report investigating steroids in the past that managed to raise more questions than it answered due to Mitchell's lack of power. The game's most well-known player, already unpopular outside of New York, was outed somehow and left to hang for a supposedly anonymous test that he had failed over 5 years previous. This only echoed the Congressional testimony given by many different stars in 2005, again expecting these players to admit to what they had been presumed to have done. Mark McGwire had the right attitude when he said, "I'm not here to talk about the past. I'm here to be positive about the subject." But baseball wasn't.

In analyzing baseball history, we learn to appreciate the context in which games were played and numbers accumulated. Bob Gibson's 1.12 ERA in 1968, while a great accomplishment, is less impressive than Pedro's 1.74 ERA in 2000, due to context. The effect of these decisions by Selig and the MLB administration was largely as Zirin describes -- the blame was placed on the players (and mainly on a few stars, even though PED use was widespread among all types of players) with very few fingers pointed to the context in which they played. This context was one that encouraged home runs and had routinely turned a blind eye to PED abuse since the "greenie era" until Bonds started, in someone's opinion, desecrating the record books while still refusing to talk to media and be a good spokesman for the game.

But by focusing on Manny, whose suspension has played out just how the policy is supposed to work going forward, Zirin's point is slightly diminished.