I know it was you, Manny. You broke my heart.

Today was an emotional roller coaster for me.

First, there was immediate anger and frustration. I paid 39 bucks for the guy in my fantasy league, and now I have to scramble to make up for his production for the next 50 games. I was furious.

Then, of course, there was my favorite part of the day: the schadenfreude. Is there any better type of freude? As a Yankee fan living in the heart of the beast here in the Hub of the Universe, the past five years have been awful. In that time, I've seen two Red Socks world championships, but even worse, I've seen my team become a collection of aging, overpaid, mercenary cheaters. It's like two ships passing in the night, except one is on its way to Tahiti, and the other is headed toward a hurricane. Even when Major League Baseball commissioned an independent study on the use of performance enhancing drugs, they picked a guy on the Red Socks payroll to conduct it (I'm looking at you, George Mitchell). Cmon!

So finally, a former Red Socks player was implicated in a performance enhancing drug scandal. I know the counter to that, precious reader: but Manny isn't a Red Sock any more! He said it was a mistake! There's no evidence of prior use! I've read a lot of articles today, and had a lot of conversations, and I have to tell you that I'm amazed at the level of credulity that's been injected (pun intended, of course) into the performance enhancing drug debate overnight. There's no evidence that A-Rod used PEDs outside of the time frame that he admitted to, but that didn't stop all manner of commentators and armchair critics from wildly speculating and throwing out all sorts of salacious rumors. Which is fine; A-Rod is a cheater, and he deserves it. But you know me, dear reader. Where I come from, if we go down, we go down together. So if you think that a highly paid, elite slugger whose physical prime started in the free-for-all pre-testing era became a first-time PED user at age 36, well, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

That's not the end of the story, though. When these steroids allegations first started coming out, beginning with McGwire and Sosa, you'd read a lot of old-timey types writing about feeling betrayed. These guys were heroes, after all, and we admired them and trusted that the legacy of the game was safe in their hands. After we realized that they were cheaters, and worse, that they were only the thin edge of the wedge, there was a collective (and brief) "Say it ain't so, Joe" moment. I say brief, because that betrayal that you read about turned into cynicism, and now the stock reaction from the sports punditocracy when a new name surfaces is "how can we be surprised" and "you're guilty until proven innocent." It's like that Copyrights song: when you find that your heroes are all assholes, you'll put that pedestal away.

Problem is, I never really felt betrayed. Firstly, because McGwire and Sosa and Bonds and Palmeiro never played for my team, and I never thought of myself as having allegiance to the game. I still don't. And even when it came out that Andy Pettite juiced, and Clemens, I can't say I felt like their cheating was an affront to me. And they were Yankees, so I supported them to the greatest extent possible because they were my guys.

Manny wasn't my guy. Or at least, not in the way that a Derek Jeter or a Paul O'Neill is. I like those guys because they're Yankees. I liked Manny because of who he was as a ballplayer. Manny played a kids' game like a kid. He goofed off in the outfield just like me and countless others like me goofed off in the outfield. Sometimes he admired a home run a little too long or showed up a pitcher a little too much, but is there anyone among us who wouldn't do the same if he hit a home run out of a major league ballpark? Because he was such a goofball, people accused Manny of being dumb. And maybe he is dumb. But every time I saw him out there in left field with a vacant look on his face, I imagined him looking at all the other players on the field with him and thinking "These poor bastards are taking this kids' game seriously."

I love sports, and I take them seriously, to an extent. Watching Manny play always gave me an important sense of perspective. Baseball was his job, and he was good at it, but I always got the sense that he knew he was playing a game, and being paid handsomely for it.

And of course, he played for the hated Red Socks. And he killed the Yankees more times than I care to remember. In spite of all that, I still liked him as a ballplayer. So he wasn't my guy like Jeter is my guy. But maybe that made him my guy even more, because liking Manny required something more than an allegiance to the team I was raised to like. I had something, however trivial, invested in this guy.

So at the end of that roller coaster, after the ups and downs and twists and turns, when the car jerks to that sudden stop, is the betrayal. I know that betrayal is a hyperbolic term here. Manny wasn't thinking "gee, I know Timmy will be disappointed in me if I do this, but I'm going to cheat anyway." I know. But we all want to root for guys we like, and especially guys we like because we choose to. And when you make that choice, to root for a guy whose teammates you hate, and who most other people think is an oaf at best, and it turns out that you cast your lot with a guy who's not any better than the likes of Barry Bonds or Alex Rodriguez, how else are you supposed to feel?