If the latest ESPN report is right, ...

.. then baseball has its "I didn't enhale" moment.
ESPN's T.J. Quinn and Mark Fainaru-Wada, respected authorities on steroids, are reporting that Manny Ramirez tested for positive for something called hCG. According to this scary site, among the reasons people use hCG is regeneration of testosterone production after a period of steroid use.

Ramirez said the substance for which he tested positive was not a steroid. If the ESPN report is accurate, Manny's statement is an exercise in semantics. It's like claiming you were speeding because your speedometer was busted by unavoidable mechanical error when, in fact, the speedometer was busted because you had overtaxed the car weeks earlier and the needle on the gauge had given out.

For a few hours there, Ramirez seemed to have a shot at public tolerance. What if a legal, accepted drug, one prescribed for a medical condition unrelated to steroid use, was the cause of the positive test? Then MLB's testing program would have suddenly appeared excessively rigid and imprecise. If it could ensnare the innocent, its value would have been called into question.

There's more to this story. You know there is. And here's the really interesting part: If anybody's going to come clean on his steroid use, it's Manny. He's just goofy enough to let the whole truth flow on a whim.

A-Rod is about to come back, and his return would have been a media carnival anyway. Now it'll be even bigger. Ramirez will give media outlets something else to talk about, but that additional material won't come at the expense of Rodriguez-related news. If anything, the Ramirez situation only intensifies the glare and relevance of the steroid issue.