Kenny Williams Hypocritical Message

When it comes to steroids in baseball, we are all hypocrites. No matter how tough a stance people take on the performance enhancing drugs, we all have a guy or two we are willing to forgive. I’m as guilty as anyone, I eagerly anticipate Sammy Sosa getting his Cubs’ number retired, yet make fun of Mark McGwire any chance I get. Many baseball fans get angry at a players on other teams for using PEDS, then have to reconsider their position when their own guy is busted.

Insert Kenny Williams and Manny Ramirez. Personally, I couldn’t care less that Ramirez used PEDs, it has no impact on the White Sox this season, and he isn’t the first guilty baseball player to wear a White Sox uniform. However, Kenny is sending a bit of a hypocritical message here. As pointed out on the Danny Mac show today, Kenny had some harsh words about steroid users just last year when Manny was suspended.

“Any time the purity of the game is put at risk, the competitiveness, the equal chance to compete on the field on a daily basis, [it hurts the game],” Williams said. “Absolutely it’s to the detriment of the game and we, as players, as people in management and coaches and everyone on the peripheral, have a responsibility.

“[The media] are part of that group. There is a responsibility to be caretakers of the game, and conduct ourselves that people before us did so. Yes, if anyone tells you it’s not a black mark each time any of these things happen, they’re kidding themselves.”

Now here is what Kenny said yesterday when asked about the Manny/steroid issue.

“(Ramirez) explained exactly what he thought he was taking and the reason for it,” Williams said. “So absent of any sort of proof, who am I to make such judgments against a guy in that fashion?”

So, management has a responsibility to conduct themselves properly, and the playing field should be level, but all that is thrown out the window when there is a month left in the pennant race? A judgement, and a rather harsh one, was made 15 months ago without any proof. Now that you employ that very same person, it isn’t okay to make a judgement? That is one mixed message.

Now, like I said, I don’t care about Manny’s steroid use at this point. We all have said hypocritical things when it comes to steroids, and despite his hard stance against them, it turns out Kenny Williams is no different. When it came time to win baseball games, he threw the high and mighty morals out the window. Guess he’s just like the rest of us.