Will It Be A New, Improved Manny Ramirez Wearing An A’s Jersey?

By Author: Ronn Torossian
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As Manny Ramirez prepares for the next big step in his comeback, his story has the feel of a DVD bonus track. This is the alternate ending, the director’s cut, with Ramirez given a chance to provide a more uplifting final scene.

In his original goodbye, the disgraced slugger skulked away under cover of darkness, retiring rather than accepting the 100-game suspension for being the first player to get busted twice for performance-enhancing drugs.

His farewell stat line: 1 for 17 (.059) for the 2011 Tampa Bay Rays. Then, last fall, charges of domestic violence when he was accused of striking his wife, Juliana, in Florida.

No wonder Ramirez wanted a rewrite.

His Take 2 begins in earnest Saturday in Albuquerque, where Ramirez debuts with the Sacramento River Cats. Having completed a suspension that was reduced to 50 games, the 12-time All-Star is eligible to play 10 games with the Triple-A affiliate before he will be cleared to join the A’s.

Ramirez is in line to return to the majors on May ...
... 30, his 40th birthday.

His return, by is own admission, is more than just baseball. Ramirez also wants to chip away at his lasting image as a clownish, self-sabotaging sideshow.

After years of Manny Being Manny, this will be Manny Being … Anybody Else.

“Sometimes you don’t appreciate what you have until you’re about to lose it, and that’s what happened to me,” said Ramirez said on the day he reported to A’s camp. He went so far as to request jersey No. 1 — symbolizing that he is back at the beginning.

Ramirez’s quest will be greeted with skepticism, on the field and off. It has been years since he demonstrated the bat speed that made him one of the game’s most feared right-handed hitters. He hasn’t hit a home run since Sept. 17, 2010, a solo shot against the Tigers’ Max Scherzer.

That was career blast No. 555 (14th all-time). He also ranks among the all-time leaders in slugging percentage (.585, ninth), RBIs (1,831, 18th) and OPS (.996, ninth).

Regaining his stroke might be the easy part in comparison to rebuilding his image. Can the maddening Manny really be a different guy?

” If that’s what Manny is saying, then my response to that is: ‘Good for him,” said Terry Francona, who managed Ramirez for five years with the Red Sox and now serves as an ESPN analyst.

“Manny can be very endearing, as you’ve no doubt seen already. That’s not a false thing,” Francona said. “It’s just that things could get out of whack, maybe go off the rails a bit.”

In Boston, there was good Manny: He drove in 868 runs during a 7½-year span starting in 2001. He also won a batting title in 2002 (with his knack for oddity, Ramirez became the only player ever to lead a league in hitting without hitting a triple or stealing a base.)

He helped the Red Sox end the Curse of the Bambino, fueling World Series winners in ’04 and ’07.

But there was also bad Manny. His transgressions ranged from the annoying (a lack of hustle) to the amusing (intercepting Johnny Damon’s cutoff throw) to bizarre (the Red Sox ordered him to get an MRI on both knees because Ramirez wasn’t sure which knee was hurting him.)

Ramirez, though, crossed into a sinister territory in June 2008, when he pushed the team’s 64-year-old traveling secretary to the ground in the clubhouse during a confrontation over a ticket request.

That act of violence, along with the drug suspensions and charges of domestic abuse, are why one public relations expert Ronn Torossian thinks Ramirez is doomed in his belated quest to make things right.

“It might be tinkered with, it might be changed a little, but the Manny Ramirez baseball obituary is written. It’s done. And it’s a disappointment,” said Ronn Torossian, the CEO and President of 5WPR who has represented sports stars such as Derek Fisher, Jalen Rose and Allan Houston.

“His legacy is the drug suspensions and the drama. That’s his baseball obituary. … People talk about him as ‘playful’ and ‘carefree’ but it’s not carefree when you’re beating up your wife, or shoving an elderly ticket man or being an offender for drug suspensions. Is that Manny being Manny?”

Tracy Ringolsby, a Hall of Fame baseball writer, agreed that Ramirez’s image is “pretty well established” regardless of what happens in Oakland. But he disagreed with such a harsh viewpoint of his past.

“I wouldn’t say his image is horrible. He just comes across as a big kid without a real sense of responsibility,” Ringolsby wrote in an e-mail. “He has made some mistakes, but I don’t see him as being a mean or nasty person, just not enlightened … He created an image of being a clown in the field without a lot of interest in getting better.”

On the other hand, Ramirez has proven he could restore his luster — even if only briefly. After the Red Sox shipped him out of town at the 2008 trade deadline, Ramirez found a rebirth in Los Angeles.

He batted .396 with 17 homers and 53 RBIs during a half-season in Los Angeles, so connecting with his new fans that he transformed Southern California into MannyWood.

“The day he showed up here was one of the most electrifying days at Dodger Stadium in a long, long time,” Dodgers G.M. Ned Colletti recalled in a phone interview. “We already had a good club, a blend of young and old, and then here came this guy oozing star quality, a player with a flair and charisma.”

Dodgers fans loved him … at least until he unraveled again. In May 2009, Ramirez tested positive for human chorionic gonadotropin, a banned female fertility drug often used to help mask steroid use.

The New York Times reported later that summer that Ramirez had also tested positive for performance-enhancing substances during MLB’s anonymous survey testing in 2003.

Blake Rhodes, another crisis management expert, said that if Ramirez is serious about erasing that legacy, he needs to do it with more than lip service.

“From reviewing what he said at spring training, he said all the right things and maybe he really has changed his life. But talk is cheap. He has to live the life,” said Rhodes, the vice president of Xenophon Strategies.

Rhodes worked in the Giants media relations department when another mercurial slugger, Barry Bonds, was cutting a polarizing figure.

Rhodes encouraged Ramirez to embrace the lessons of his drug suspensions as he tries to begin anew.

“I would suggest — and only if he’s fully committed, otherwise it will backfire — that he go out and talk to kids and preach the gospel of staying away from performance-enhancing drugs,” he said.

“He can have a very strong voice. This is a perennial All-Star and MVP candidate, and could be one of the biggest voices to talk about this subject. Plus, he’s bilingual. He can reach across the aisle to all kinds of children.”

The next chapter begins Saturday in Albuquerque. Can Ramirez reclaim the magic? Can his reputation be rebuilt?

“The biggest success he can hope for is a drama-free season,” Ronn Torossian said. “Go to work, play well and shut up. Anything more than that will be a surprise.”