Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Team

Jeff Kent had cried his last tear. He gathered his family and went on with the rest of his life, and the Dodgers went on with the rest of their business. And so it was that, after Kent announced his retirement at Dodger Stadium on Thursday, Ned Colletti went back to work. As he walked along a corridor, a fan stopped him. "Hope we get Manny," the fan said. "Me too," the Dodgers' general manager said. That, Dodgers fans, is your Manny Ramirez update. There is so much interest, so little news.

Dodgers Manager Joe Torre didn't directly address whether his controversial new book about the New York Yankees would affect his relationship with his current team during an appearance Friday night on CNN's "Larry King Live." "I think that's a great question," said Torre, who revealed his contract with the Dodgers does not include a confidentiality clause. "I say I hope so because they don't want you to write a book unless you win a championship. So hopefully we'll have that issue later on."

Manny Ramirez might not be signed by the start of spring training after all. Ramirez's agent, Scott Boras, on Wednesday clarified a statement he made last week about his expectation that his client would be signed by the time camp opened. "When I talk about the start of spring training, I talk about when the games begin," he said. Players will start reporting to the Dodgers' camp on Feb. 14. Their first scheduled Cactus League game isn't until Feb. 25.

Chad Billingsley has started 76 games in the major leagues. Hiroki Kuroda has started 31, Clayton Kershaw 21. Randy Wolf has started 241. And so the Dodgers signed Wolf to a one-year contract Friday, plugging a hole reserved for a veteran starter at the back end of the rotation. The contract guarantees the left-hander $5 million and affords him the chance to earn up to $3 million in incentives, starting at 170 innings pitched.

Manny speaks. Just in time for me to admit I'm sick of hearing about him. The Times' relentless Dodgers writer Dylan Hernandez was granted access to Manny Ramirez on Saturday, meeting the fascinating, forsaken slugger in his Pensacola Beach, Fla., winter workout center. Just in time for me to admit that I barely even care. Training in the Florida panhandle, negotiating like a Los Angeles panhandler, it's ridiculous, and it has to end.

Perhaps never before has a sport so badly needed an elder statesman the likes of Joe Torre. Friday, he keynoted the first day of the rest of baseball's life the way few others could. "The healing has to start now," he said. At the beginning of the week, the Dodgers' manager could have reasonably assumed he would be addressing the media here, on this day before spring training, about Manny Ramirez . . . or his recently released book on his years with the Yankees . . . or his pitching rotation.

There is no Manny Ramirez on the Dodgers' roster. At least not yet. But an even bigger concern is that there is no Johan Santana or CC Sabathia, either. "We don't have that level of guy," pitching coach Rick Honeycutt said. The Dodgers don't even have a Derek Lowe, the kind of pitcher they could use on short rest in a postseason series.

Reluctant to talk about the way last season ended for him, Chad Billingsley responded to a question from a reporter with a question of his own. "Why are we talking about the past right now?" he asked. Is there any particular reason he didn't want to talk about it? "I've talked about it," he said. Not really, he was told.

Welcome to Dodgers spring training 2009. Please discard any lingering lamentations about tradition and Florida. Arizona awaits, with a shiny new $100-million stadium complex, beckoning fans to forget the economy for a few days and take refuge in the primal pleasures of baseball. Think heat, not humidity; saguaro cactuses in lieu of swaying palms; fajitas instead of fried fish. Think Camelback Ranch in Glendale, the new spring home of the Dodgers. Unlike the expensive schlep to Vero Beach, Fla.

The Dodgers open their new spring training ballpark in two weeks, with the first of 17 games at Camelback Ranch in Glendale, Ariz. After enjoying countless games with other teams in the Cactus League in the last decade, we can offer hard-learned advice to Arizona rookies. -- Sherry Stern and Christopher Smith TIPS Plan or adjust Weekend games tend to sell out quickly. Procrastinators will find better seats for weekday games. Tickets to sit on the grass are almost always available.