Dodgers begin adjusting to life without Manny Ramirez

Dodgers move on haltingly without Manny

LOS ANGELES — A pair of baggy black jeans hung inside his locker. A nearly empty water bottle sat on a shelf. A pristine No. 99 jersey was ready to be slipped on.

It looked as though Manny Ramirez had briefly stepped away instead of being suspended for 50 games a day earlier by Major League Baseball for a drug violation.

“I’m not sure it’s sunk in yet,” manager Joe Torre said before Friday night’s series opener against the rival San Francisco Giants. “You’re so used to seeing him but reality sets in and you sort of have to force it on yourself.”

Ramirez will lose nearly $7.7 million in salary; the Dodgers have yet to know whether they’ll take a financial hit from the prolonged absence of their dreadlocked slugger.

He’s eligible to return July 3 in San Diego.

Merchandise connected to Ramirez, like No. 99 jerseys, T-shirts and dreadlocked wigs, remains for sale around Dodger Stadium. Anyone wanting to exchange an item related to Ramirez can do so with or without a receipt, a club official said.

Ramirez was single-handedly responsible for boosting attendance, souvenir sales and interest in the team before he helped it win the NL West last season.

This year alone, more than 5,000 Manny T-shirts, 800 jerseys, and 1,700 dreadlocked wigs have been snapped up, the club said.

The Dodgers sold more than 30,000 season tickets in the first 24 hours after Ramirez was acquired at last year’s July 31 trade deadline — the highest volume sold in club history.

But things are changing.

Barely a week since the “Mannywood” seating section was announced, it’s been renamed “90090″ after the stadium’s zip code. For $99, fans got two tickets and two “Mannywood” T-shirts. In its short existence, 3,130 tickets were sold to fans wanting to sit in the area closest to Ramirez’s position in left field, the club said.

About 60 tickets for “Mannywood” had been turned back by fans since Ramirez’s suspension was announced Thursday, according to Dennis Mannion, the club’s president and chief operating officer.

“We’ll wait to see if it’s appropriate to bring it back,” he said.

In an ironic bit of timing, the Dodgers’ marketing campaign that prominently featured Ramirez had begun phasing out last week. The new “My Town” campaign will include celebrities and other players, although Ramirez will be part of it, Mannion said.

“He’s still on our team,” Mannion said. “Some people were suggesting we take a high moral ground and I don’t think we are in a position to do that.”

Mannion said the club heavily advertised Ramirez’s return to boost season ticket sales, which typically go on through May. After that, team performance and play dictate sales, which are often buoyed by school letting out for the summer.

The Dodgers’ 13-game home winning streak to open the season — which set a modern day record — got snapped in an 11-9 loss to Washington on Thursday night.

“It was a downer,” Torre said. “I was exhausted at the end of the day.”

Ramirez’s teammates were slowly adjusting to life without him.

“It was tough news to take,” third baseman Casey Blake said. “I’m not going to judge him.”

Without Ramirez, the Dodgers’ goal is to retain their place atop the NL West standings.

“Are we better with him?” Blake asked. “Yes we are, but we’re still very, very good without him. What are you going to do, shut it down without him? No.”

After talking to Ramirez earlier Thursday, Torre said his evening phone call to the superstar went unanswered. The two men didn’t speak Friday.

A person familiar with the details of the suspension said Ramirez used the female fertility drug HCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the banned substance wasn’t announced.

HCG is popular among steroid users because it can mitigate the side effects of ending a cycle of the drugs. The body may stop producing testosterone when users go off steroids, which can cause sperm counts to decrease and testicles to shrink.

Ramirez said he did not take steroids and was given medication by a doctor that contained a banned substance.

Ramirez’s situation quickly became fodder for countless Internet jokes. The front page of Friday’s New York Post blared, “Girlie Manny.”

Torre expected some reaction from Giants fans, who thrive on any kind of misfortune experienced by their rivals in Southern California.

“Everybody has a right to think the way they want as long as they don’t throw anything,” he said, chuckling.

Fan reaction ranged from depression to anger to shock around a city that had embraced Ramirez since his arrival last July.

“They’re not going to forget what he did here, how he did it and how much fun he had doing it,” Torre said. “I think they’d welcome him back.”

Just when Ramirez rejoins the team is uncertain. He’s allowed to work out with the club, but must be out of uniform when the stadium gates open for games. The Dodgers open a six-game road trip Tuesday in Philadelphia, followed by three games in Florida.

Hall of Fame announcer Vin Scully and his famously soothing voice that has defined summer in the city to generations of fans expressed the collective mood a night earlier.

“Hi everybody, and a very pleasant Thursday evening to you, wherever you may be,” Scully said in opening his TV broadcast.

“The Dodgers and the city of Los Angeles and all of California and for that matter, all of baseball, still shocked and stunned over the suspension of Manny Ramirez. We’ll have more to say about that a little bit later on, but no one man stops baseball.”