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A billboard featuring Los Angeles Dodgers'…Manny Ramirez





Manny Ramirez gone, and Dodgers trying to move on
AP





By TIM DAHLBERG, AP Sports Columnist Tim Dahlberg, Ap Sports Columnist – Fri May 8, 4:43 am ET

LOS ANGELES – Mannywood felt empty. The Dodgers felt down.

What Manny Ramirez felt was anyone's guess, though his apologists insisted it was sorrow and remorse.

Sorrow, perhaps, for sticking a dagger in the heart of the town that adopted him as one of their own. Remorse, more than likely, for getting caught cheating and having to give up $7.7 million because of it.

Manny being Manny, though, he wasn't around to tell us himself. The people who did the talking explained he was trying to gather his thoughts before expressing them to anyone.

"The thing that was toughest for Manny is how he disappointed everybody," manager Joe Torre said. "He loved it here, and he loves how the fans get turned on by him. He was devastated."

So are a lot of Dodgers fans, and not just because a season that had such a magical beginning may now be ruined. They had bought the act, and now they had to come to grips with the fact that although the dreadlocks were real, everything else was now in question.

Thursday night was supposed to be a time for celebration of past and present at Dodger Stadium. The World Series heroes of a half century ago were being honored, and the Dodgers tried — but failed — to stretch their record season-opening 13-game home winning streak, losing to the hapless Washington Nationals 11-9.

They still partied like it was 1959, paying tribute before the game to guys whose idea of being juiced was quite different from what it is now. Players such as Wally Moon and Tommy Davis got a chance to sign autographs again, and talk about a game that once seemed so simple to figure out.

This being Dodger Stadium, there was only a sprinkling of fans watching. Everyone else was still stuck on the freeway or, perhaps on this night, just too disgusted to come to the ballpark.

Didn't matter, because they had already missed the real show. That took place as the Dodgers began batting practice under a hot California sun, and Torre and general manager Ned Colletti stood before a microphone behind home plate in the very same spot where they stood a few months earlier crowing about their signing of Ramirez.

They had the job of explaining everything that had happened and what it all meant. But there wasn't much in the way of explanations because no one was quite sure what Ramirez's story was, and no one could say for sure what anything meant.

Officially, no one was saying he took steroids. Unofficially, everyone was left to draw their own conclusions.

"It's a dark day in baseball in a lot of ways," Colletti said. "But people do make mistakes. We have to figure out ways to go forward."

That was much the same thing Torre told players in what he described as a somber clubhouse once the Dodgers had filed in by mid-afternoon. The meeting was closed, but Torre said he told them that they had to band together, play hard in their star slugger's absence and welcome him back come July 3 in San Diego.

Torre's players echoed the theme, though in different ways. They had gone to bed last night riding high on the winning streak with the best record in baseball, only to wake up this morning to news that would change their team forever.

This wasn't some middle reliever or utility player going down. This was the heart of their team, a player who was not only the most feared hitter in baseball but someone a lot of the young Dodger players looked on as a role model.

Six runs in the first inning against the Nationals helped ease the pain temporarily. But it didn't change the fact that there will be 49 more games without Ramirez, and an uncertain future even when he returns.

"Everyone is going to be disappointed," catcher Russell Martin said. "People love Manny here. It's definitely going to be tough. But what can you do? You just have to move on."

Out in Mannywood, the section of seats down the left-field line named after Ramirez, they had already moved on. The Dodgers had taken down their Mannywood promotion by midday and offered refunds to anyone who had spent $99 for two seats and two Mannywood T-shirts.

Todd and Cristy Costello were sitting in a front row of the section that will now be named "90090" after the Dodger Stadium zip code, hoping a ball would come their way in batting practice so one of their two sons could catch it.

Ten-year-old Dylan was wearing a Ramirez jersey and a glove, ready for his chance. His parents had told him what was happening, but even they admitted they weren't sure just what it was.

"You kind of want to keep a positive outlook on the whole thing," Cristy Costello said. "To them, he's a role model."

Unfortunately in baseball, there's not many of those left.

____

Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg@ap.org