Man Up, Manny -- Address Teammates

What, did somebody die? There are too many grave problems in this world for Manny Ramirez to sequester his dreadlocked soul in solitary confinement. He prefers to hide this week, a full seven days after word surfaced of his self-inflicted steroid shame, rather than apologize in person to his Los Angeles Dodgers teammates as the club's mortified owner has demanded.

"He's really beaten up over this. He's embarrassed," manager Joe Torre said. "I think it's going to take him time to clear his head. We want to see him as a team. The players are here, and they're supporting him. But right now, he's not ready for it."

One, two, three: Awwwwwwww.

Let's just throw a pity party for the poor, pitiful juicer. Look, for years, we dealt with Manny Being Manny, and now that he has been revealed as another gifted ballplayer and aborted Hall of Famer who couldn't handle prosperity without a hit of human chorionic gonadotropin, it's high time for Manny to be a Man and own up. The very day he was busted with a women's fertility drug that served as a testosterone booster, Ramirez should have marched into the clubhouse at Dodger Stadium and addressed the mates he let down. He has yet to do so, with Torre and owner Frank McCourt hopeful that he will this weekend when the team plays the Florida Marlins in Miami, near Ramirez's home in Pembroke Pines. "There's a chance," Torre said. "We haven't been given any definitive information."

The longer he waits, the bigger coward he is.

All Ramirez did was trash a dream season for the Dodgers, a team that hasn't been to a World Series since winning it in 1988. All he did was ruin a wonderful marketing plan centered around "Mannywood," the section in left field where fans wearing $25 dreadlocked wigs worshiped their hero; since the dirty drug test was made public, the team has shut down Mannywood and worked quickly to remove Manny billboards across southern California. All he did was take one of the redeeming treats of Major League Baseball -- his grin, his goofiness, his skill as the greatest right-handed hitter of his generation -- and deposit it in the same sinbin that housed Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez and the other cheats. When A-Rod launched his immaculate, first-inning, first-pitch home run the other night in Baltimore, I was left to sit in the press box, marvel at the trajectory and wonder what possessed a man with so much natural talent to betray himself and the sport by using juice. Next time I see Ramirez, on July 3 in San Diego, I'll have similar thoughts.



Until then, his best course is to communicate openly, not only with his teammates but with fans who want answers and kids who should know why he was so compelled to cheat with 'roids. Hiding only reminds us of the double baseball life he was leading. He met personally with McCourt only because the owner ordered him to do so.

"I wanted to meet him face to face," McCourt said. "He started off the meeting by apologizing and acknowledging the disappointment that he's created -- not only for me but for others. He's in the process of doing what anybody else would do if they made a mistake, in terms of making amends here and communicating with the people he knows he has to communicate with and then going about repairing his relationships. And of course, his is magnified many times because he's a public figure and a very popular one."

But that doesn't give Ramirez any wiggle room in McCourt's eyes. The most important relationship he must repair is the one with his teammates, because when he returns this summer, they must accept him back regardless of whether their once-gaudy 6 1/2-game lead in the National League West has shrunk. "If Manny takes the steps that I'm hopeful he will, I think this will be something that won't damage this franchise at all," McCourt said. "We all make mistakes, and it's how we deal with those mistakes that really differentiates one from the other. And if Manny does with others what he did with me, I think we'll be on the road to full recovery.

"It's really up to him how he conducts himself before I can answer how it affects the organization. That being said, the Dodgers are much bigger than Manny Ramirez or any player. The Dodgers are much bigger than anybody -- including me, including owners. This is a civic asset, and it's really owned by the fans. And life will go on."

It will resume more smoothly in L.A. once he starts showing his face. Two of his Dodgers teammates, Rafael Furcal and Guillermo Mota, told the Los Angeles Times that Ramirez continues to be distraught. "He's recuperating," Mota said. Furcal elected not to ask Ramirez about his bust and 50-game suspension during their phone chat, saying, "You know, everyone's asking him about that. I didn't want to bother him with it."

Post-scandal silence is insulting to all of us, of course, and that goes for the commissioner's reticence as well. Has anyone seen or heard from Bud Selig since the Ramirez news? This is the man who has told us repeatedly, for years, that baseball's steroids sleaze is in the past and that MLB has implemented a stronger testing system.

Actually, those improvements are why Ramirez was busted, which Selig should be pointing out publicly. But we sense that Bud is in mourning again, realizing his legacy as The Steroids Commissioner just suffered another major blow in 2009. No sports czar in the history of Planet Earth has dealt with such a relentless run of high-profile juicing, encompassing four of the game's all-time greatest players. And last weekend, in the middle of it all, we had former major-league utilityman Lou Merloni recall a spring-training meeting in which a doctor told Boston Red Sox players why steroids could be advantageous. Merloni doesn't remember which year the meeting occurred, but he was with the organization between 1996 and 2002, before the current ownership/management group led by John Henry, Tom Werner, Larry Lucchino and Theo Epstein.

"I'm in spring training, and I got an 8:30-9:00 meeting in the morning," Merloni said on Comcast SportsNet. "I'm sitting in the meeting. There's a doctor up there and he's talking about steroids, and everyone was like, 'Here we go, we're going to sit here and get the whole thing -- they're bad for you.'

"No. He spins it and says, 'You know what? If you take steroids and sit on the couch all winter long, you can actually get stronger than someone who works out clean. If you're going to take steroids, one cycle won't hurt you; abusing steroids it will.' He sat there for one hour and told us how to properly use steroids while I'm with the Boston Red Sox, sitting there with the rest of the organization, and after this I said, 'What the heck was that?' And everybody on the team was like, 'What was that?' And the response we got was, 'Well, we know guys are taking it, so we want to make sure they're taking it the right way.' ... Where did that come from? That didn't come from the Players' Association."

Dan Duquette, the team's general manager at the time, angrily shot down the report. But considering Merloni's years with the Red Sox were squarely in the Steroids Era, can his story be dismissed? Certainly not.

Selig's public protector and longtime pal, Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, has a way of revising history and shifting blame. Never mind that Selig, as commissioner, is ultimately responsible for the game's ills. Reinsdorf blames Players Association chief Donald Fehr, who clearly is a major villain here but also looms as someone Selig should have targeted and defeated in the steroids war -- and could not. "The idea that it was Selig's fault that it wasn't caught earlier is nonsense -- it was Donald Fehr's fault that it wasn't caught earlier," Reinsdorf told MLB.com.

What Jerry never will admit is that Selig could have battled Fehr publicly and told the world regularly about the evils of steroids in baseball. Problem was, Selig was too busy flip-flopping about whether he was aware of steroids or not. In July of 1995, Selig was quoted in the L.A. Times as saying, "If baseball has a problem, I must say candidly that we were not aware of it. It certainly hasn't been talked about much." So we can't take Reinsdorf seriously when he says, "As early as in the early '90s, we were trying to get testing." Get your timelines straight, fellas.

The race is on to see who surfaces first, Bud or Manny. Maybe they can hold a joint news conference, with Selig wearing a $25 dreadlocks wig and Ramirez agreeing to a 1950s "Happy Days" cut.

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The Dodgers, who have stumbled a bit without Ramirez, still have a good enough club to survive this crisis. They have young sluggers in Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier and James Loney. They have speed and balance at the top of the order in Furcal and Orlando Hudson. They have veterans such as Casey Blake and overpriced but serviceable Juan Pierre. Their pitching isn't as solid, but Chad Billingsley is emerging as the ace, vets Randy Wolf and Jeff Weaver are performing wonders and Jonathan Broxton is a stud closer. In a division with the weakling Padres, Diamondbacks and Rockies, their only concern is the starting rotation of the San Francisco Giants. Come July 3, the Dodgers still should be in first place, assuming post-Manny fallout doesn't linger.

"They sort of nudge each other. It comes from the veterans; they're fine," Torre said of the clubhouse leadership over the last week. "I think that the whole thing with Manny, they were stunned at first. Then you just kind of organize your thoughts and go about your business."

In the end, whether the Dodgers soar to great heights in the second half and the postseason will depend on where Ramirez's head is. Consider it yet another reason he should crawl out of his cave and address his teammates. "It's up to Manny," Torre told reporters Wednesday in Philadelphia. "Right now, I think he's struggling with his feelings."

Man up, Manny. The only thing worse than a cheater is a cheater who's also a baby.