Manny Ramirez’s sudden retirement is the perfect ending to a career few could figure out

SCOTT JACOBS

Throughout it all, the hitting streaks, the timely doubles, the infectious smile, and the dreads, Manny Ramirez was in every sense of the word, a memorable character.  As eccentric as they come.  So with his career clearly on the decline, his prestige nothing more than a name, “Manny,” and a team in the Rays clearly going nowhere it made sense that this year would probably be his swan song.

Call it a disturbing tune.

Manny Ramirez abruptly retired today, after reports began to leak that he tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in Spring Training, an automatic 100 game suspension for the slugger who was once larger than Fenway’s Green Monster.

Now he’s another sham: a bum who tried to hold on way too long, another black eye to the P.E.D. era that just won’t quite go away.

His numbers are Hall of Fame worthy, and his whacky unexplainable personality is the stuff of legends, to be told to generations of baseball fans to come. To leave in such a distasteful manner is rather fitting for the slugger, who didn’t do anything by the book.  Rather than let another suspension zap anything left of the credibility he had as a ballplayer, he buried his head between his legs and left the sport on a whim, an embarrassing escape from the sport for one of baseball’s all time feared swingers.

“I can’t put my finger on you. You’re unpredictable. Kind of mysterious,”  Allison says to Carl in the movie Yes Man.  The same could have been said of Manny.

No player was harder to explain.

Manny played in 2302 games, scored 1544 runs, recorded 2754 hits, 547 doubles, and smacked 555 home runs out of the yard.  He knocked in 1831 RBIs and walked 1329 times in an 18 year career unlike any other.

Yet none of it seems to matter anymore.

His numbers however gaudy are clearly marred by his now 2 positive drug tests (and however many before they started seriously testing for this stuff).  Another indictment to a sport littered with great players gone P.E.D. stale.  No sport has watched it’s heroes and titans fall faster than baseball.  First it was Rafael Palmeiro, then Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and now Manny.

I know we’re supposed to allow our players to be innocent before proven guilty, but this disturbing trends of stars fading right as they exit the game is a problem that greatly haunts the best players of today.  Once again all our stars are on a close watch, and how can anyone take what they do seriously?

In Harvey Frommer’s Remembering Fenway, a book of iconic Fenway Park pictures, the back cover features Manny stepping out of the giant Green Monster scoreboard, with a look that just sort of sums his career up.  That look?  Confusion, mystery, an aura of bizarre that exceeded anything beyond rationalization.

But that was Manny.  He developed into an elite power hitter in Cleveland, than got a fat payday from the Red Sox in 2000 ($160 million for 8 years) — a contract that brought incredible success to the Red Sox (including that long awaited World Series title in 2004 and 2007).  When things soured in Boston he became the savior in Los Angeles, reviving a dead in the water Dodgers team during an incredible summer of love tour in LA. Dodger Stadium quickly turned into MannyWood, and Ramirez was treated like a god once more.  But his numbers began to fade, and then the big blow — his first failed drug test for performance enhancing drugs cost him 50 games.

From there he became a sideshow, getting dealt from the Dodgers to the White Sox last season, and doing nothing to revive Chicago’s playoff hopes.

He garnered little interest in the free agency market this past offseason, until the Rays scooped him up in a desperate P.R. ploy to sabotage their poor fan base into thinking they still cared.

“I’m here, like I said, because I love the game, I love to compete,” said Ramirez at his press conference introducing him and Johnny Damon to the Rays. “It doesn’t matter how much money you make.  If you love the game, it doesn’t matter. What you want is a chance to prove to people that you still can do it. So for me, it was not about the money, I could have gone someplace else.”

Apparently he didn’t love the game enough to respect it and he certainly didn’t prove to people that he still could do it.

And in the end he did go somewhere else.  He hit the showers.  Permanently.

Photo: Getty

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