Manny Ramirez: Get busted for steroids, make $20 million

Image via Wikipedia

I would think that after spending about a third of his season on his ass suspended for getting busted using steroids, Manny Ramirez would be happy to play baseball in exchange for a ride to the ballpark and a novelty miniature baseball bat. The Dodgers slugger had a gigantor confirmed asterisk added to his professional career, and pretty much laughed the whole thing off. Here on True/Slant we just decided to call it ‘Manny Being Manny.’ Now I see that if you’re a performance-enhanced slugger, Los Angeles just doesn’t really care.

How do we know they don’t care?

Well, because he got to ‘exercise an option’ in his contract that allows him to collect another 8 figures in salary next season:

The team said Friday that the slugger exercised his $20 million contract option for 2010. His agent Scott Boras informed general manager Ned Colletti of the decision, which Ramirez had until this month to make.

He could have exercised an out clause in the two-year, $45 million deal he signed in March.

via Manny Ramirez sticks with Los Angeles Dodgers for $20 million option – ESPN.

I raged here about Michael Vick making more than a million bucks to mostly warm the bench for the Philadelphia Eagles. But considering his station in life as an iconic pro football quarterback prior to us finding out that he was dog murderer, it really was quite a step back for him to go from earning about $25 million a year with big-time endorsements to where he stands now.

Comparable logic does not appear to apply in the MLB.

So I guess that unless Manny goes to jail, he could stick a syringe in his ass on SportsCenter and sit out half the season, and he’ll still make enough money to really worry about President Obama raising his taxes and cracking down on offshore tax shelters. There may be justice in some parts of the world, but not in Major League Baseball.

A modest proposal: Future baseball player contracts will stipulate that if you get suspended 50 games for shooting up, you don’t get to keep making $20 million a year.