The Dodgers should stop waltzing around and make their marriage to Manny Ramirez a proper one. I'm talking here about a real contract, not the truncated one they extracted during the off-season, which covers two years but allows baseball's sweetest swinger to leave after the last out of 2009.
It means a real commitment, from both sides, a deal probably stretching at least four years, enough time for Ramirez to leave a permanent legacy instead of possibly walking away next winter as nothing more than a beautiful footnote.
This makes perfect sense when you look not only at Ramirez's scintillating performance since landing in L.A., but also when you walk through the raucous Dodger Stadium stands that the team on Thursday christened "Mannywood."
You read right: There are stands now known as Mannywood.
Sure, this is yet another marketing prop from the Dodgers (who giddily announced before the Padres game that the stadium will soon have its own ZIP code). For $99, throughout the year, fans will get two blue T-shirts scribbled with "Mannywood" across the chest, and a pair of seats a short shadow from Ramirez's left-field perch. The old walk-up price for such seats? $120.
Might be a prop, but there's a deeper meaning here. "Mannywood," along with marketing efforts such as Ramirez's smiling mug affixed to billboards all over the megalopolis, show just how firmly the Dodgers have latched themselves onto the city's newest big thing. There's no hesitation, no holding back, no doubt about what they have. So why not take the next step and make this thing last a while?
Those concerns about how he'd act once he grew used to the traffic, his teammates and the smog? They're off in the faraway background now. After Thursday's 8-5 victory over the Padres, Ramirez isn't just the team leader in the clubhouse; he's again leading the Dodgers on the field with a .372 average and a .654 slugging percentage.
And his connection with fans? Sure, L.A. loves Kobe because of his skill, swagger and cold-blooded-killer 'tude. But Ramirez -- softer, goofier, wearing the befuddled look of a man who has just lost his keys while still an assassin with a bat -- is already right up there with Kobe. This was easy to see out in Mannywood.
"It's his pizazz," said Marisol Cabral, a college student from Pico Rivera who'd brought her father to the game for his 50th birthday. Manny promptly rewarded her by coming to the plate and smacking a double. "See, there's just nobody like him."
