Via Baseball’s Steroid Era, Manny’s story about using legal HCG to raise his testosterone did not hold water:

Before the prescription came to light, Ramirez’s representatives had been expected to argue on appeal that the elevated testosterone level was caused by DHEA, said authorities familiar with MLB’s testing procedure, who also asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The World Anti-Doping Agency considers DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) a steroid and has banned it but baseball hasn’t.

These authorities, however, said the league would not have considered a test a positive if it were known that DHEA caused the spike in a player’s testosterone-epitestosterone (T-E) ratio, a key marker relied upon by international doping authorities to establish if an athlete is using steroids.

Speaking generally about the MLB testing procedures, Professor Christiane Ayotte, director of the WADA-accredited lab in Montreal where Ramirez’s sample was tested, said her facility reports test results “as precisely as possible,” knowing what substances are on a specific sport’s banned list and detailing if exogenous testosterone (steroids or its precursors) or DHEA provoked the elevated T-E ratio.

The lab report would include whether the individual tested positive for DHEA even though Ayotte added, “We know DHEA is not on baseball’s prohibited list of substances.”

The big question in my mind is how long was Manny using? Did he dope when he went to the Dodgers to improve his prospects for a 2009 contract, or does this go back a long time? The fact that he passed drug tests up until this spring suggests the former. If it is the latter, however, how did Manny fool the tests for so long?