If you want to know what Jimmy Rollins's walk-off double looked like from the Dodgers’ bench, don’t ask Manny Ramirez for his vantage point.
"Actually, I was in the shower," Ramirez said. “I only saw the highlight.”
This was the gross response of Ramirez when asked what his thoughts were about Jimmy Rollins' walk-off double.
Highlight?
You do realize that hit sealed your team's defeat and put them one game away from elimination, right?
Manny was taken out in favor of Juan Pierre in left field as a defensive substitution because we all know the exploits of Ramirez roaming the outfield.
Apparently the heart-wrenching 5-4 loss didn’t have an impact on the former slugger, as Ramirez told the media on Tuesday, "I slept like a baby [last night].”
Nonetheless, this shower garbage is the kind of unacceptable behavior that those who reside in Dodgertown worried about when Ramirez was acquired last season.
Some are stating that since Manny was on the 2004 Red Sox team that came back from a 3-0 ALCS deficit, he is just keeping his cool and taking things game-to-game.
Up until this point, I thought that Manny’s ignorance was bliss.
It just turns out that his ignorance is pure idiocy.
Regardless of how relaxed he is, or how goofy he is, it’s downright insulting to the rest of his team to go shower while the game is still in progress.
Throughout his tenure with the Dodgers, I have been as forgiving as any fan with the routine of "Manny Being Manny."
When he came into town, I joined in embracing him as the offensive savior of a mediocre team, despite the glaring fact that he had mailed it in for the Boston Red Sox just weeks earlier.
When he came to Spring Training and announced, “I’m baaaaack!” I dusted off the Ramirez jersey with anticipation for the season and the impending havoc he would wreak on the league.
When he was suspended for a P.E.D. masking agent, I defended him because his success at the plate dictated the Dodgers' success in the standings.
Then a funny thing happened.
The Dodgers showed us that in a world without Mannywood, the Dodgers weren’t half bad.
Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier blossomed into emerging superstars.
Casey Blake, the “other” trade from 2008, mashed the ball constantly to fill the void in the middle of the Dodgers’ lineup.
Juan Pierre turned into a Southland superhero through his hard-nosed approach at the plate and his never-ending hustle on the base paths.
James Loney provided a steady hand and served as the table setter for the potent back-end of the lineup.
It seemed like the 50 games without Ramirez would be a long, dangerous road, but the team went 29-21 in his absence, and quickly pushed thoughts of the imposing slugger out of memory.
And then as fast as the suspension had cast him to the back burner, Manny re-emerged with an equal explosion on July 3 in San Diego.
During his first 16 games back, he hit .347/5/17 and put up numbers that were right in alignment with the massive damage he was doing to opposing pitchers the previous season.
The 16th game included in those stats was the infamous bobbleslam he lashed on July 22, and in my opinion, that was the turning point of his season. If I were to say that things went downhill from there, it would be a vast understatement.
The team went just 34-33 following that night, and what had been a seven-game lead in the NL West was whittled down to just one game by the Colorado Rockies on the final Saturday of the season.
Manny turned into a pedestrian hitter over the final 61 games of the season, batting .251/8/26.
Yep, he drove in just nine more runs over his next 61 games than he did in his first 16 back from suspension.
Some might argue that it was the injury he suffered just 24 hours earlier, when Homer Bailey hit him on the hand with a pitch.
..That the hand injury slowed his bat down, threw off his timing, and sent him into an extended slump.
I argued that.
Just like I argued for him during the offseason and once again during his suspension.
This time, I said that the injury excuse was simple: he got hit on the hand, and now his bat is slower so he can be exploited with an inside fastball. As the season progressed, he would bounce back and regain full health, allowing him to drive the fastball once again.
But this time he didn’t bounce back.
His hands just got slower, and slower, and slower.
Then I argued that pitch selection must be causing the slump.
Surely, if he just shows more patience and drives pitches to right field he can break out of it.
Never happened.
Then I was forced to accept the reality that Manny couldn’t do it without steroids.
He peaked in those initial 16 games because he was fresh and healthy. He enjoyed 50 games to rest his aging muscles and build his strength, but after that initial surge all of the wind came out his sails.
Much like when Manny was suspended, Joe Torre did the only thing he could in the shower situation by offering the politically correct answer and downplaying the fact that his starting leftfielder decided to shower instead of watch his teammates play the final half inning of a pivotal playoff game.
"Manny has so much confidence," Torre said. "When we get a lead late in the game, and I've taken him out, whether it be for defense or we have a big lead, when we go up to shake hands after the game, he's in his street clothes."
I know that was what Torre had to say.
But this isn’t the Manny Ramirez who has carried a team on his back.
This is the new Manny Ramirez.
The one who limped into the postseason and was woefully unproductive after returning from his 50-game suspension.
The one who was dressed and out of the locker room within 10 minutes of a loss in Game One of the NLCS.
The one who took a shower during the ninth inning of a playoff game.
Ramirez even acknowledged that anything could happen until the last out is made, yet still he decided to wash off as his team suffered defeat.
"It's like I always say," Ramirez said. "You've got to keep grinding it out and see what happens. That's the key, until they get the 27th out, you don't know what will happen."
And the “anything” that could happen was a devastating walk-off winner off the bat of Rollins.
While Torre can’t come out and throw his fragile superstar under the bus in this situation, the organization can take a stand and not welcome Ramirez back next season.
Currently, Manny stands to make $20 million in 2010 ($10 million of which will be paid then, the rest to come over three years), but he possesses a player option to void the contract and become a free agent at the conclusion of the playoffs.
With the team announcing on Tuesday that general manager Ned Colletti signed a long-term contract extension his first order of business will be to address the status of Mannywood in the upcoming season.
The way I see it, Colletti has to make every effort to shutdown Mannywood, because the young core of Kemp, Ethier, and Kershaw, can easily guide this team.
It would also eradicate the team of Ramirez’s aging bat and tiresome antics.
So turn off the power, close down the ticket booths, and remove the zip code: Mannywood has to go.
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