by John Scanlan
So how exactly should we treat him? I can’t even bring myself to mention his name.
He’s a Dodger after all. As a Dodger fan, I feel I should show nothing but support, but I morally feel at a crossroads. Am I supposed to just pretend he didn’t do anything wrong and accept him back unconditionally?
Sure, he is very important to this team, but I don’t want to appear to condone what he has done. Yes, everyone makes mistakes and everyone deserves a second chance, but at what point do we say enough is enough and hold them to a higher standard?
He hasn’t talked directly to the media about his poor decision making. Shouldn’t he have to offer some mea culpa to them?
He hasn’t spoken to the fans directly. Aren’t we entitled to some form of apology?
We could make him a social pariah and boo him every time we see him walking through left field, but we are way too forgiving of Dodger players. As long as that uniform says Dodgers, fans will cheer for them. God forbid they be traded or not brought back by the Dodgers, though. We save our boos for the likes of Shawn Green and Nomar Garciaparra, guys who did nothing close to as heinous as what he did and were nothing but classy and professional during their time with the Blue.
He isn’t the first one to do this and he isn’t going to be the last. That doesn’t make it OK and neither does the argument, “Well, it’s not as if he killed somebody”. He very well could have.
His “poor decision making” could have adversely effected the lives of many people. If you don’t believe me, ask the families of Nick Adenhart and the other victims who tragically lost their lives on April 10th.
OK, I’ll go ahead and say his name. I’m talking about Ronald Belisario, who was arrested this weekend on suspicion of DUI. Who’d you think I was talking about? Oh.
While Manny Ramirez may be vilified this week for using PEDs, it is Belisario who deserves the scorn of the baseball media. Belisario deliberately but himself and others in harm’s way by making the choice to do something that could have had deadly consequences. Thankfully, the California Highway Patrol stopped him before anything tragic occurred.
Ramirez, caught using a female fertility drug designed to restart testosterone production at the end of a steroid cycle, made the choice to do something that would benefit him and his team personally. Thankfully, baseball stepped in and stopped him before…he could grow ovaries?
You’ll have local hacks like Bill Plaschke pretend to be the moral compass of Los Angeles and try to browbeat you into booing and heaping scorn upon Ramirez. I’ll save my outrage for guys like Belisario, who two short months after the death of Adenhart, chose to endanger other people’s lives by driving drunk.
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