If real life carried hashtags, there would be a big #whitepeopleproblems at the end of every story about David Ortiz flipping his bat after a home run and pissing off the Yankees. The way people have been reacting you’d think he flipped his bat, punched Mark Teixeira in the dick on the way around, blew a kiss to A.J. Burnett on his way past third and toppled a makeshift set of Red Sox-played bowling pins as he pantomimed an exploding bomb at home plate. Nope, he basically just did what he always did, and even the smallest charismatic outbursts must be smothered to death by Major League Baseball.

Before you read today’s Dugout, click the hashtag up there and catch up on the story. When you’re done, be sure to hop over to Facebook and “like” The Dugout, so you can have an additional page on the Internet where I’m begging you to leave comments.

Today’s Dugout follows.

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Manny Ramirez is retiring. I guess that’s what six losing games with Kyle Farnsworth will do to you. Major League Baseball announced the move in a statement on Friday.

“Major League Baseball recently notified Manny Ramirez of an issue under Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program,” the statement said. “Rather than continue with the process under the Program, Ramirez has informed MLB that he is retiring as an active player. If Ramirez seeks reinstatement in the future, the process under the Drug Program will be completed. MLB will not have any further comment on this matter.”

Manny leaves behind a legacy of being one of the best hitters and most insane, illogical human beings of his generation. Two World Series championships in Boston are matched by how he used to disappear into the Green Monster to pee. Twelve All-Star selections, and that time he caught a ball, ran up the outfield wall and high-fived a guy. 555 home runs and over 1,800 runs batted in. Dreadlocks wigs, shifty motivation and pronouncing “Boston Red Sox” as “boson red sogs” in his intro video to MVP Baseball.

Ramirez has been one of the most memorable characters in The Dugout since its inception, running around and making airplang noises and playing spies, and if my inability to let go of Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds is any indication, Manny will be being Manny well into the future. We at With Leather wish him the best in his future endeavors, which I guess are sitting around in his underwear and watching cartoons.

/glare

Something’s not quite right about baseball season this year. Maybe it needs time to settle. The Baltimore Orioles are 4-0. The Tampa Bay Rays added some big name free agents to their roster and they’ve yet to win a game. Cats and dogs are living together. Mass hysteria.

Whatever the problem, it’s time for the Rays to come together and figure out how to start winning ball games. Tonight they take on the Angels, and because you have never heard a joke about how long that team’s name is before, here is another one: The Los Angeles California Angels of the West Coast of the United States Area Code 90012 But Actually Anaheim.

Today’s Dugout follows.

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Right now, there’s a severe lack of MLB news. The hot stove of free agency has cooled off by now, and there are only a handful of valuable free agents left; however, that doesn’t mean we should just forget about them. I present to you… the Warm Stove.

Adrian Beltre: Even though he had his second-best season in his career in 2010 with 28 HR, 102 RBI and an OBP of .365, the main reason why Beltre hasn’t been signed yet is due to his age. Teams just don’t know if Beltre could have that productivity constantly at 31. He will find a team shortly, but I doubt he’ll come close to his numbers last season. That stint still did what it was supposed to do: up his value and make his case for a multi-year contract, which he will land.
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The worst thing about all this failed PED test business is that ESPN becomes even less watchable than usual. “SportsCenter” and “First Take” are in the veritable sports news kitchen, baking up their usual recipes of speculation and conjecture, which is kinda redundant for us since I wrote about this yesterday, you read about it yesterday, and it just feels like the monolith is a day behind on this.

And the big angle that ESPN is taking deals with Ortiz’s denial and subsequent tough talk with regard to his thoughts on punishing players that test positive for PEDs. But what else would he do? If he’s on them, he’ll talk the talk and act like he’s not, like his one of the guys whose legacy was besmirched by this whole thing. If he’s not (and since nobody knows for what the players were being tested in 2003), he would have spoken out in much the same way.

By the way, today is baseball’s trade deadline, though it doesn’t seem that Blue Jays pitcher will be leaving Toronto (the Jays are asking for too much). Hey, I know! Let’s talk about steroids some more! Or beat in the side of my skull with an aluminum bat. I can’t tell the difference. Don’t forget to turn that right hand over.

People are clamoring for the list of the 104 Major League players that tested positive for steroids in 2003 to be made public, but it will never happen. Because the “lawyers with knowledge of the results” are surely getting his rocks off by leaking these names in such a piecemeal manner, as they’ve now done by leaking David Ortiz’s and former Red Sox outfielder Manny Ramirez’s test results from 2003.

Never mind the fact that the list was simply an audit to determine whether or not MLB would implement any legitimate testing, and not an actual test itself. Never mind that the list was sealed before being seized by federal regulators. Never mind that there are still 97 players on that 2003 list that are still anonymous, giving armchair pundits plenty of pasture to speculate about “who was dirty.”

We don’t know who was on what, or when, which makes these “revelations” completely worthless. Is Big Papi’s legacy in question now? It depends; do you assume that every pitcher he faced in 2003 was clean? Do you assume that only a select few of Ortiz’s rival hitters were illegally medicated? It doesn’t seem to matter now, because “lawyers with knowledge of the results” decided to point the invisible finger at Ortiz, and outlets like the New York Times and ESPN are going to suck that finger until milk comes out of it.

This whole thing is just out of hand. You can’t stick the syringe back in baseball’s ass and suck all the PEDs out of the game, and yet that’s what everyone covering the game is trying to do, and will continue to do, even as these guys become eligible for the hall. How can you point a finger and ostracize one guy when, as far as anyone knows, everyone sharing the field with him could be doing the exact same thing?