Dodgers' Manny Ramirez has some explaining to do

I liked Manny. Still do.

Right now he's a big disappointment, but I've had bigger ones in life. Don't even get me started on the RV mutiny or Derek Fisher.

Here I am worried all this time about dogs or kids coming across Gary Matthews Jr.'s HGH stash, and maybe it's the cheater who has been standing beside me a good part of the last year.

Yeah, I still like Manny, but he's stupid, the only explanation for any athlete in this day and age allowing performance-enhancing drugs to be linked to their name.

He's let a lot of folks down, beginning with himself.

The blue carpet was rolled out, the reputation makeover proceeding quite nicely, but then he goes out of his way to empower the "I told you so" mob.

It's a depressing world we live in at times, a lot of folks actually taking delight in someone's colossal blunder or human frailty, just so they can feel better about predicting it.

On a positive note they all seem confined to Boston with access to the Internet, or are columnists who regularly write on the front page of sports sections.

As far as most of them are concerned, the story is over, Manny finished. But this story is just beginning to be written.

Now I have no idea whether it was HGH, HCG, ABC or whatever letters of the alphabet Ramirez put into his body. I don't care, although the mention of a female fertility drug does leave the door open for a punch line or two when he returns.

I also don't give a hoot whether he received bad medical advice, sounds accountable in statements crafted by agent Scott Boras, or wants to curl up in a ball.

Right now he should be in the batting cage before the game, which his 50-game suspension allows, and then sitting in Mannywood down the left-field line with the folks who paid no attention to the "I told you so" mob.

I'd have him buy his own ticket -- if Frank McCourt hasn't already thought of it.

Manny should be the first guy in the clubhouse greeting his teammates after each game, maybe his bat removed from the lineup but no excuse for not giving everyone the pep he's brought to that clubhouse. And I said pep, not PEDs.

Some think he should have addressed his teammates before the game, but then Larry Bowa is like that.

But Manny's teammates know all about him, how he feels, what they must do in his absence and what he will be like when he returns in a few days. And he better return in a few days, hiding or the perception that he's hiding doing even more damage.