Manny Ramirez tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs for the second time, we learned today.  So Manny, being Manny, retired from baseball.  And for the next few days, then for a number of days five years from now, there will be a great media debate over whether Ramirez will make it into the Hall of Fame.

The baseball writers with actual votes on this matter have sent a resounding message to anyone linked to PEDs the past few years.  That message is that there is no place in the HOF for them.  Agree or disagree (which I do), there is still a strong enough voting bloc that strongly believes this to make it an immutable fact: if you are linked in anyway, official or rumored, to steroids, you will not be going to Cooperstown anytime soon.

So what do I think of Manny’s chances of being a first-ballot Hall of Famer?  Pretty good actually.

While the message sent by the Baseball Writers Association of America has been clear, Manny represents a case that we have not seen come before the jury so far, and won’t see until he is eligible for consideration.  Players like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens had careers that were historically transcendent, and rank highly all-time at their respective positions.  Despite this, they are viewed as despicable characters, and, right or wrong, character often plays a strong part in HOF election.  Players like Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro, while not universally beloved as people, probably net a reasonably neutral public opinion.  However, their Hall of Fame case is slightly narrower.  McGwire hit a hell of a lot of homeruns, but take those away and there isn’t a whole lot there.  Palmeiro achieved some gaudy counting numbers over the course of a very long career, but was never really considered an elite player at any point of his career (ahem, Bert Blyleven, ahem, ahem).

But Manny?  Manny will come before the HOF jury with the same baggage as Bonds, Clemons, McGwire and Palmeiro, but he will be the first of the PEDers with historically great numbers – probably one of the top 5 right-handed hitters of all-time – and a Clinton-esque public approval rating.

I subscribe to the Buster Olney philosophy that we will never know, definitively, who did and did not use performance-enhancing drugs in an era where Major League Baseball did very little to discourage it, and that the greatest players of this era should be granted admission to Cooperstown as with any generation before.  Obviously, not enough BWAA members share this belief, but I like to think that Manny Ramirez represents the best hope to get the ball rolling in a direction where the truly elite of a regrettable era are included in a museum that should represent a complete history of the game we love.