Selena Roberts has been blasted for using anonymous sources in her Alex Rodriguez steroids-and-other-allegations book, The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez.
Why, then, is the media running with the news that Manny Ramirez used HCG, and that he tested positive for steroids?
Yahoo!Sports, attributing a source close to Ramirez, reported that the substance for which Ramirez tested positive was a sexual-enhancement drug prescribed to address erectile dysfunction. But multiple news sources, including the Associated Press and espn.com, quoted anonymous sources that Ramirez tested positive for the female fertility drug HCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin.
Nobody is questioning THESE anonymous sources.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not defending Manny Ramirez by any means. I’m defending Selena Roberts and the necessity of anonymous sources. I’m also trying to highlight the reason I think Roberts is getting attacked the way she is — blatant sexism. I don’t quite know how to make this argument, though. The only way to get around it, I suppose, is to simply highlight the hypocrisy in yesterday’s furor over Manny Ramirez, and leave it at that. If it isn’t a vindication for Selena Roberts, well, it ought to be.
Tim, you know exactly what hurts Roberts' credibility and it isn't sexism. It's the fact that she tried to bury the Duke LaCrosse players and has to apologize for it. Hell, she was on Jim Rome last week and made up some stupid excuse for why she was not wrong or sorry.
She writes a book with anonymous sources stating that he may have taken steroids...sounds like an elongated version of the National Enquirer.
Maybe, maybe not. But the irony of the "anonymous sources are okay for the Manny story, but not the A-Rod story" remains.
The Duke story is a mess because nobody on any side of the story told the truth, at the beginning or otherwise. Every single person involved hid what they were up to.