Mike Celizic

Hearing that Manny Ramirez has finally signed with the Dodgers is like being a kid in and learning that the circus is coming to town. You’re delighted, knowing that the thrills, chills, spills, laughs galore and fun for the entire family is just around the corner.

Los Angeles needs Manny. Baseball needs Manny. You and I need Manny.

He’s the Official Knucklehead of Major League Baseball, (Accept no substitutes.) and there’s no way to adequately explain how much every sport needs a guy like him.

There will be days when Dodgers fans won’t believe that, a day when they wish he’d just shut up and quit pouting and stop being a jerk and play the game. And there will be days when they’ll wish he’d run on contact instead of standing at the plate admiring a ball that bounces off the wall and leaves him at first with a single instead of second with a double. On other days, they’ll wish he’d learn how to catch a simple fly ball or throw the ding-danged ball to the blanket-blank cutoff man.

But is almost certain that there will never be an extended time when Dodger fans regret the day the team re-signed him. That’s the way it is with Manny. He makes you laugh. He makes you cry. He makes you jump up and down in your living room cheering your fool head off. He makes you throw things at the TV in outrage and frustration.

Even in Boston, where Manny went from knucklehead to excretory orifice in his campaign to get traded out of town, there have to be a lot of fans whose overall memory of Manny is one of fondness rather than anger or rage. He helped Boston win their first World Series in 86 years in 2004, then helped them win another two years later. He’s an RBI machine and a clutch hitter extraordinaire.

So what if he wanders off to Mannyland every now and then? If he didn’t do that, he wouldn’t be Manny and we’d all be poorer for it.

Fans like to whine about players who aren’t perfect in every aspect of their lives, but that’s not only unrealistic, it’s foolish. The game needs quiet stalwarts like Albert Pujols, players who are known for their great charity as well as their great talent. But it also needs people to fill other character niches. It needs a Derek Jeter to date all the supermodels, an A-Rod to act as a human lightning rod for criticism of every kind, a Randy Johnson to play the big, ornery cuss who’d drill his own grandmother if it would help win a game.

And it needs its official knucklehead, Manny Ramirez. With other players, you can take a day off from paying attention, or simply check the box score to catch up on what they’re doing. With Manny, you can’t ever look away because he can thrill and disgust and amuse you in so many different ways.

He can make a spectacular catch and he can roll around in the grass kicking and slapping the ball around like a character in a cartoon. He can high-five a fan in the middle of a play and blow off a kid in a wheelchair waiting for an autograph outside the clubhouse door. He can hit the walk-off home run, and he can stand at the plate looking at three strikes without taking the bat off his shoulder. He can laugh and celebrate with his teammates, and he can trade left hooks with them in the dugout. He can chat amiably with reporters, and he can tell them all to kiss his dreadlocks.

He wears that baggy uniform and he’s got all that hair hanging over his name on the back of his uniform. (Memo to Joe Torre: Just because you had to undergo innumerable hair transplants just to get a little cover on your dome is no reason to make Manny get a haircut. If he wants his hair hanging to his belt and decides to grow a beard and braid it with ribbons like a pirate, let him. Manny’s gotta be Manny, Joe.) We either love the look or we love to grouse about it. Either way, it’s good for the game.

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Although I think of him as Homer Simpson – “D’oh!” – he’s more like Dennis Rodman used to be in the NBA. People loved to complain about the way he looked and acted, but when the ball went up, you wanted him playing defense and hauling down rebounds for your team. As long as he was a great player, the rest of the stuff was just part of the sideshow.

And let’s not forget that Manny isn’t just a great player of his era, he’s one of the greatest hitters in the history of the game. When you talk about the best right-handed hitters of all time, you talk Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Manny Ramirez, A-Rod and Pujols.

That’s why the Dodgers had to sign him. As surely as the night follows the day, if Manny stays reasonably healthy, he’ll give them 120 ribbies, about 40 home runs and 35 doubles and he’ll slug .600 and get on base four of every 10 trips to the plate. Every single year.

And while he’s doing it, he’ll give the rest of us another year’s worth of pratfalls, heroics, snits and guffaws. That’s a package you won’t find anywhere else.

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