Rename Mannywood to Scammywood

I've never felt more cheated, used, betrayed, gobsmacked. All my life, I've been watching baseball and gushing over the magnificent talents of legends -- Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez -- knowing each was distinguished among the all-time elite in his particular craft. Now, all have been shamed and ruined by steroids, damned steroids, and I wonder how we explain to future generations that so much sleaze and deceit could dominate such a pathetic period.

Hold up the bullhorn so I can scream in Bud Selig's deaf ear: The Steroids Era never ended, oh stubborn and blind commissioner, and if Ramirez's devastating bust doesn't educate one and all that the dirty labs remain far ahead of the doping cops, nothing will. Manny has no credibility to begin with, based on the way he quit on the Boston Red Sox and other irresponsible transgressions through the years, and his story about how he flunked a drug test and wound up with a 50-game suspension is right down there with, "The dog ate my homework." He claims he never used a performance-enhancing drug, saying he went to a doctor and was prescribed medication for a personal health problem that just happened to contain a substance banned by Major League Baseball.

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This nonsense wasn't remotely believable when the actual story did surface Thursday via ESPN: Ramirez used a testosterone booster called HCG -- human chorionic gonadotropin -- a women's fertility drug entrenched in the steroids culture. Like Clomid, associated with Bonds and Jason Giambi in the BALCO scandals, HCG restarts the natural testosterone flow when a juicer is finished with a steroid cycle. In some cases, HCG is used as the actual steroid, and tests reportedly showed testosterone traces in Ramirez's body.

So, like his smudged contemporaries, Manny looks today like a cheater and a liar who tried to cover up his sin and failed miserably. "Recently, I saw a physician for a personal health issue," he said in a statement that wasn't written by him. "He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was OK to give me. Unfortunately, the medication was banned under our drug policy. Under the policy that mistake is now my responsibility. I have been advised not to say anything more for now. I do want to say one other thing: I've taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons."

Even if his alibi was true, why would anyone with so much at stake -- the Hall of Fame, a $45 million deal, a loving relationship with Los Angeles Dodgers fans who turned his slugging presence into a "Mannywood" phenomenon -- allow a personal doctor to provide medication that could stain a drug test? By now, doesn't every serious athlete in the world realize that the body is his or her temple and that there should be total awareness of every substance put in that body? Not even Ramirez, one of the goofier dudes to roam the sports beat, is that stupid.

He knew exactly what he was using. He figured he wouldn't get caught, even though baseball's testing system is more elaborate than ever. And, like the others, he got caught anyway. The fact Ramirez quickly withdrew an appeal -- while apologizing so earnestly to Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, CEO Jamie McCourt and manager Joe Torre -- is all you need to know. "I want to apologize to Mr. McCourt, Mrs. McCourt, Mr. Torre, my teammates, the Dodger organization and to the Dodger fans," Ramirez said. "L.A. is a very special place to me, and I know everybody is disappointed. So am I. I'm sorry about this whole situation."

Not as sorry as he'll be down the road. As a gold-card-carrying member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, I cannot in good conscience give Ramirez a Hall of Fame pass any more than I can Clemens, Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro or Mark McGwire, whom I've rejected -- like the vast majority of voting writers -- on three straight ballots. Ramirez has blown a wonderful opportunity for direct entry into Cooperstown, despite his questionable past. As the best right-handed hitter of his generation, his career was reborn in L.A., where his stunning numbers last August and September (.396 batting average, 17 home runs, 53 RBIs) somehow were exceeded by his otherworldly performance in the postseason (.520, 4 homers and 10 RBIs). He was the sort of dreadlocked cartoon character that we embraced to escape the steroids haze, and in L.A., where people don't treat baseball nearly as religiously as in Boston, he and the Dodgers seemed like the perfect Hollywood marriage.

They were becoming the best story in the majors, too, with 13 consecutive home victories to start the season and Ramirez at the forefront of a lineup with ample speed, power, balance and youth. What if he had carried his start -- .348, 6 homers, 20 RBIs in 27 games -- to a National League MVP award? What if Manny and the Dodgers had played the Red Sox in the World Series, and, in his ultimate revenge on Boston, Manny had won? That storyline, coupled with monster career numbers that make him one of only eight players with at least 500 homers, 1,700 RBIs and a .300 average, would have cinched his Hall worthiness. But now, even if the Dodgers survive and surge to a winnable NL West title after he returns July 3, it's all tainted because of a positive test.

"How did I feel? Sick. Saddened," Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti said. "It's certainly not a good day for baseball. It's a dark day for baseball, including this organization. But everybody makes mistakes. Everybody is held accountable. The rules are in place."

"I did speak to Manny. He feels very badly, and right now, he's trying to gather his thoughts," said Torre, who knows how to perform spin control having dealt with relentless steroids fallout with the New York Yankees. "Manny feels like a disappointment, and when you watch a guy play the game full of enthusiasm and confidence, right now, he's not that same guy. He's a human being who made a mistake. I'm not saying we condone that. He's the one who did the wrong thing, and no one's trying to cover that up."

There is one city that is happy about Ramirez's plight today. That would be Boston, where the Red Sox are doing just fine without his daily baggage and love his replacement, Jason Bay, who actually has been outperforming Ramirez this season. Boston management bit its lip when Manny was producing historic stats. In the end, John Henry, Larry Lucchino and Theo Epstein knew what they were doing in purging him ASAP last summer.

I realize the last name you want me to interject about now is Jose Canseco, America's lunkhead. But once again, as he did with McGwire and Clemens, Canseco called out Ramirez as a steroids suspect last month. In a speaking appearance at the University of Southern California, he speculated that Ramirez's name "is most likely, 90 percent" on the 2003 list of 104 dirty major-leaguers. When asked about it days later, Ramirez didn't deny it, telling the Los Angeles Times, "I got no comment, nothing to say about that. What can I say? I don't even know the guy." Whether or not Ramirez's name is on the list, we don't know; of the 104, we only know that Rodriguez is included. But we do know Manny is in the steroids culture, the biggest name nailed by MLB's drug-testing system.

If we'll be forever disgusted that Selig is repeatedly bombarded and embarrassed by high-profile steroids sagas, at least give his administration credit for not covering up the Ramirez case. I never thought a superstar would be ensnared by MLB. Sadly, in revealing Manny as a cheat, this is an example of the system doing its job. Unfortunately, it's also the latest sign that baseball players remain enamored of steroids -- and will be until a test for human growth hormone is developed, after which the dirty labs will have moved onto a newer batch of undetectable designer steroids. It really is a hopeless scandal, and any more Selig propaganda that baseball has solved its steroids problems should be ignored like horse manure in the street.

In the past, scabs always have healed in baseball. The game survived the Black Sox scandal, the Pete Rose scandal, various labor impasses, collusion, outrageous salaries, unconscionable ticket prices. The reason has nothing to do with Selig, the owners and the players and everything to do with sunshine, beer, food and ballparks. It gives America something to do in the summertime, pure and simple. Football has been entrenched as the country's most popular and meaningful sport for two decades. Baseball is all about local passion and civic identity.

But if every great player is using steroids, what we're watching is artificial and fraudulent -- and the summer pastime is endangered. "As a game, we need to regain the trust of the fans," Torre said. "It's not going to be an overnight success, and we have to endure what we have to endure. I'm always surprised when something like this happens, and I never want to believe that this stuff still exists, even though reality tells us that it does. It's obviously a distraction, a void in our clubhouse. But our job is to go out and play the way the Los Angeles Dodgers play, and that is to win, with or without him."

In spring training, Yankees star Derek Jeter defended himself and others against widespread perceptions that every baseball player was dirty in the Steroids Era. "One thing that's really irritating and really upsets me a lot is when you hear people say that everybody did it," he said. "No, that's not true. Everybody wasn't doing it.

"I think it sends the wrong message to the fans. I think it sends the wrong message to kids, saying that everybody was doing it. That's just not the truth. I understand there's a lot of people, a lot of big-name players that have come out that were allegedly doing this, allegedly doing that. But everybody wasn't doing it."

After Scammywood, it just seems that way.