Dodgers should pay Manny Ramirez

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Ted Green is a former sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times and the National Sports Daily. He is currently senior sports producer for KTLA Prime News and will be contributing to the Fabulous Forum.

Ted wrote this before Frank McCourt commented yesterday, not committing to new contracts for Manny Ramirez or Ned Colletti.

Remember the scene in ‘Jerry Maguire’ where Cuba Gooding Jr. tells his agent (Jerry) during a memorable phone exchange that it’s time to get paid?

Manny Ramirez, meet Rod Tidwell.

In other words, SHOW HIM THE MONEY!

What else can the Dodgers show Manny?

Do they dare show him the door?

The guys comes to L.A. and morphs into a right-handed Ted Williams in dreadlocks, without the terminal case of the grumps.

I mean, who hits .400 even for two months? I know, no one.

Did I also mention he re-energizes an aimless franchise that looked like the Titanic, except Nancy’s B.’s organ replaced the band? Manny, the hitting savant, puts the team on his back, carries it to the cusp of a division title, forces writers to think the unthinkable, that a two-month summer rental could actually be the NL MVP.

And get this: He even displaces Kobe as L.A.’s jock du jour.

Having said all that, can the Dodgers even think for a nanosecond about cutting him loose? Do they have the gall to say, thanks for the Manram-ories?

Now you can certainly understand why Frank McCourt breaks out in a Dodger blue rash when anyone mentions the word ‘contract’ followed by a lot of zeros. About $83 million blown on Jason Schmidt and Andruw Jones would discourage any reasonable businessman. Throw in another $45 million for Juan Pierre, who’s now out of the outfield mix, and that number balloons to $128 million. That’s such a big number that it hurt just to type it.

But with Manny it’s different. If it were true, as they said, that Tony Gwynn looks like he can fall out of bed and go two for four, Manny looks like he can get three hits and never take his head off the pillow.

And doesn’t LA deserve a second superstar to go with Kobe? Isn’t the colorful Manny just perfect for our diverse, Latin-flavored city?

I’d pay another dollar for a Dodger Dog just to watch Manny hit. I’m sure there are millions more who feel the same way.

-- Ted Green