A Project in Human Behavior: Welcome Back Manny

So tonight is the night we get to find out just what hypocrites we really are.

Manny Ramirez is back after a 50-game suspension for using banned substances, presumably to cover up steroid use.

We will get to observe 45,000 testaments to why player PED use either is or really isn't a big deal to us.  As fans, we've bitched and moaned about how PED use spells the end of baseball as we know it.  It's a crime to humanity.  These players should be tarred and feathered!  Kept from the Hall of Fame!  Forced to play for the Padres!  Oh, wait.

Anyways, tonight's game is going to be packed with Dodgers fans, even though they aren't the home team.  You see, outside of the LA Times' Bill Plaschke, nobody in Los Angeles seems to care that Manny cheated.  They're excited that he is back.  They flew to Albuquerque or drove to the desert just to see their $25-million hero on his rehab assignment.

The team marketed vacation packages down to San Diego to see the return of Manny.  Chase that dollar, Dodgers, and leave your soul at the door.

The Dodgers fans will cheer their man because hey, he can help them win (or can he, now that he is supposedly clean?).  Mind you, these are the same fans who booed Barry Bonds mercilessly as a purported cheater when he was on the arch-rival Giants.  After the Mitchell Report, and Roger Clemens, and Andy Pettitte, and A-Rod, and now Manny, suddenly Barry Bonds doesn't look like such a villain anymore.

I have long said, as a Giants fan, that all that hatred thrown at Bonds was unjust and unfair.  You would have loved him had he been on your team, I argued.  Your team has users also, you're just singling him out because he is chasing a home run record none of your heroes will ever sniff.  You're just jealous because our steroid user is better than your steroid user, I claimed.

And I'm feeling vindicated, because the more players get exposed, the more hypocrisy we see.  Yankees fans cheered Jason Giambi once he started hitting.  They cheer A-Rod now, booing only when he pisses himself in crucial situations (but they did that before).  Dodgers fans will cheer Manny like no other.  Padres fans cheer Eliezer Alfonzo.  Wait, what's wrong with that sentence?  Who?

Alfonzo was suspended 50 games in the minors for doing exactly what the big name stars did: using banned substances.

But because he is a scrub, we don't care.  We don't boo.

You see, we claim that we really care about steroid use, but we don't (unless you're my colleague Joe Moag, who apparently will swear off anyone forever and always, amen, if caught using).  We claim that we hate these users.

But we sure don't hate the ones who suck (I'm lookin at you, Marvin Benard and FP Santangelo).  We sure don't boo our own team's stars (what? Philly isn't running J.C. Romero out of town?  Could that be because that bullpen NEEDS him?).

It's not Manny cares.  He claimed that he didn't rape or kill anyone.  He didn't apologize for anything, really.  And in Jayson Stark's article today about this similar topic, he offered an interesting quote from author Robert Lypsite:

'"I don't think fans are trapped in the righteous indignation of all the sportswriters who blew the steroids story as it grew on their watch," Lipsyte, a long-time New York Times columnist who also has done work at ESPN, wrote in an e-mail. "Fans understand that ballplayers have the same goals as they do: win. How mad can you get at someone who endangers their health to entertain you (like Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson)? These aren't the crooked financiers or irresponsible politicians who do deserve our anger."'

We bitch about steroid users because that's how we spend our work days.  Online, reading ESPN columnists, participating in chats, texting our friends, or listening to talking heads on TV.

But when it comes to actually backing up our words, we usually fail.  We still watch our favorite teams, and we still cheer on our users when they drive in runs that help us win.

Tonight, I'll be at PETCO Park, getting irritated at how many Dodgers fans will cheer their hero.

But I won't be irritated so much by the fact that he is a drug cheat.  It's because it's the Dodgers, and I hate them.  At least I can admit the real reason.

Let the best of this era into the Hall of Fame, because that's exactly what this is: an era of drug use.  There have been all sorts of eras.  There was the era where a ton of talent wasn't allowed to play in the major leagues because of racist rules, thereby making Hall of Famers out of Hall of Pretty Good-ers.

Boo players because you hate them and you hate their team and you hate their hairdo.  Not because they are drug cheats.

Because if he played for your team, you'd cheer him on eventually.

(Photo: Getty Images)

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Chase Parker believes in the East Coast bias, stretching triples into doubles, and considers Tommy Boy to be the greatest athlete of our generation.

Unless otherwise stated, no particular sexual orientation of anyone depicted is implied or should be presumed.