Manny is being Manny. Are you really surprised?

Well, it’s official: Manny Ramirez has used performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is the drug that Manny is confirmed to have taken, which was likely prescribed to him because he has low testosterone. The chance, however, that his low testosterone is naturally quite low. It’s probable that Manny took hCG, a fertility drug, to combat the effects of anabolic androgenic steroids, which would have caused him to lose testosterone.

Now, I’m no expert on PEDs, but this is clearly not the first time Manny has cheated the game. Manny Ramirez was the guy who led Boston to its 2004 and 2007 World Series titles. Manny ended the curse. Manny has one of the most beautiful swings in the history of baseball and perfect fundamentals. Now, he’s tarnished forever. Seriously, baseball, what is next?

I’m now looking forward to the nightmares that I never thought could happen. We’ll find out Derek Jeter took steroids or Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux have robotic arms. Is Johnny Damon’s hair real, or did he get extensions? Was Aaron Boone’s bat corked? More realistically, we will find out within a month that David “Big Papi” Ortiz took steroids with Manny. More than that, the entire Red Sox team of 2004 took steroids. Will their World Series wins be tainted? What if we find out that Albert Pujols has been juicing?

From Barry Bonds to Roger Clemens to Alex Rodriguez to Manny Ramirez, baseball is losing Hall of Famer after Hall of Famer to the steroid scandal. How can we as baseball fans continue on like this? We are living in a state of denial. Can we trust any player that we have grown up watching and praising? I highly doubt that men like Cal Ripken Jr., Chipper Jones or Ken Griffey Jr. took steroids.

I don’t think Greg Maddux would take steroids only to continue throwing a 70 miles-per-hour fastball. But as a generation of fans, have the players who broke the rules cheated us?

Honestly, no.

We have not been cheated. Maybe the purity of the sport has been tested, and maybe the records have been stained. But over the last 15 years, baseball has been quite exciting. Ever since the 1994 strike, we have witnessed some remarkable things. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa brought the sport back to the highlight reel with home run after home run. Roger Clemens proved that he could pitch late into his 30s at a Cy Young level. The Red Sox broke the curse. Barry Bonds defied the laws of physics, and Eric Gagne was untouchable in the ninth inning. Things that our parents’ generation thought would never happen in their lifetime have happened quite recently, often in the last 10 years.

Yet there is no sign that PED or steroid use can continue in the sport today. That is totally fine. I love baseball — not for the home runs but for the overall experience. Only true baseball fans can attest to this feeling.

The people of our generation that have short attention spans and continue to fall more and more in love with the NBA will continue to drift away from baseball. Without steroids, baseball is going to fall back into the standard momentum that it possessed prior to the 1990s. Players are not going to hit 50 home runs every year. Pitchers are not going to top 110 miles per hour on the radar gun. And guys aren’t going to be able to merely put the bat on the ball and see it sail 500 feet.

And you know what? I do not care.

By the time we reach 50, I think that baseball will have fallen far below basketball and football in popularity. Even sports like lacrosse, which continue to grow nationally, will be competing with baseball for athletes. I know that true baseball enthusiasts exist in large numbers in our generation, but the number of fans is nowhere near what it was in past generations.

The Steroid Era is over! Some people are excited to have the sport pure again.But there are some who are going to complain in a couple of years that baseball is not as exciting as it used to be. You are going to reminisce about the days when guys like Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco were blasting home runs out of the park. You’re going to want to see record-breaking performances on a yearly basis.

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And it is not going to happen.

I do not mean to be a Debbie Downer and all, but record-breaking seasons and careers are going to slow down to average paces. But the record-breaking performances are going to be more exciting and distinctive. So, Manny, we all knew this was coming.

We are seeing the fallout from the steroid years. Over the next couple of years, we are going to learn of more and more players who took steroids.

We are going to act surprised and disappointed. But we need to understand that it happened, it was entertaining, and it was hard on baseball. But don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it while it was happening.