Hanley Ramirez Video

If you are obsessing over whether Hanley Ramirez  should have chased that ball -- the one he himself  booted into the left field corner (see the video here) -- with more gusto, you are missing the point.

Particularly if your name happens to be Hanley Ramirez.

This isn't about whether a National League batting champion is the antithesis of Charlie Hustle. It's about a professional athlete providing us with a defining moment that will forever tarnish his image.

Scottie Pippen was a seven-time NBA All-Star and owns six championship rings, but how do you forget that he refused to play in the waning moments of a pivotal playoff game? Fair or not, it only takes one incongruous, incoherent moment to sully an otherwise sterling career. Or life.

Kermit Washington. Len Bias. O.J. Simpson.

Certainly, it can happen the other way. Kirk Gibson. Bucky Dent. U.S. Reed.

But normally, it's that one moment of ignominy that lingers like the stench over a carcass. The worst reaction to being the agent of such a moment -- and where is Ramirez's agent to admonish him about this? -- is to be truculent or defiant in the face of such a blemish.

Wise up, Hanley. There was once a National League batting champion who committed an error -- a mechanical error, as opposed to your error of immaturity -- on the field of play. Few people remember that he ever won the N.L. batting title.