The Dodgers say they won’t launch an All-Star campaign on Manny Ramirez’s behalf and who can blame them?

Why devote precious resources to something that’s already enthusiastically being done for free?
Hey, I’ll help out the Dodgers right here: Vote for Manny. Early and often. Yes, even you, Giants fans.
Plenty of good Samaritans of baseball — like Jason Rosenberg, a blogger who launched www.voteformanny.blogspot.com — are already doing the grass-roots leg work on the Ramirez campaign. And their energy and passion appears to be paying off.
Ramirez is currently fourth among National League outfielders in the All-Star voting, just 30,000 or so votes behind Carlos Beltran. With a diligent effort, Ramirez could easily be voted in as a starter by early July.
That’s when he comes off his 50-game suspension for violating baseball’s drug policy. The All-Star voting will be completed July 2. Ramirez is eligible to rejoin the Dodgers on July 3. The All-Star Game is July 14 in St. Louis.
Come on people! Let’s send Manny to St. Louis!
And while we’re all clicking on that online ballot, let’s send Alex Rodriguez there, too. He’s trailing badly in the A.L. balloting at third base but I want to see him at the All-Star Game. Increase the Bud Selig squirm factor.
Everyone has his own reason to vote for Manny. Some think it would be an embarrassing comment on baseball’s decision to turn the All-Star Game into a popularity contest, and would bring an end to fan voting. Some think it would be an emphatic rebuke of the media’s obsession with the use of performance enhancing drugs; a great big “We don’t care” statement.
Personally, I think it would be a delicious send-up of the Selig era. Before the calendar flips on this decade of baseball — the decade of denial and foot-dragging and embarrassing scandal — let’s have an All-PED All-Star Game. A hypocrisy-fest.
Get Manny there. A-Rod too, along with his mysterious cousin Yuri. Have Barry Bonds warble the national anthem. Get Roger Clemens to pitch batting practice. Anoint Jose Canseco ringmaster — he seems to need the work.
The fact that the game is in St. Louis — site of the defining moment of the previous era of performance enhancing drugs, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa engaged in a cartoon battle for the home run record — is perfect. An excellent location for the PEDapalooza.
Before Cardinals fans can get upset about their game being soiled by Ramirez’s presence, let’s trot out their favorite son, Mark McGwire. Or at least a cardboard cutout of the reclusive man. In a pregame ceremony, Tony La Russa can defend McGwire to the death, while pointing the finger at Canseco.
And since fans can participate in the official voting for the Ted Williams Most Valuable Player award, we can also work hard to vote Ramirez as the game’s MVP. And watch as Commissioner Selig presents a drug cheat with the trophy.
This time it really counts!
“If he gets voted in,” Dodgers owner Frank McCourt said of Ramirez, “it’d be a great honor.”
Oh yes, a great honor. Like being nominated for a Nobel Prize.
Actually, it wouldn’t be an honor at all. It would be a farce. A spoof. A travesty. And a pure delight.
Is all of this a mean-spirited attempt to desecrate America’s pastime? To embarrass the game? Sure. Fans stuffing the ballot box — Giants fans did it here for Bonds in 2007 — can’t damage baseball’s credibility any more than baseball has hurt itself.
On his Web site, Rosenberg said his goal is “to highlight the silliness” of baseball’s approach to drug users and the league’s head-in-the-sand approach. The mere fact that a player serving a 50-game suspension for violating the drug policy is still eligible for the All-Star Game is absurd.
So is the fact that Selig proclaims his drug policy is working perfectly. Ramirez was suspended for having a prescription for a drug used by cheats when they’re cycling off drugs. But he never tested positive for whatever substance actually elevated his testosterone levels, indicating — according to recent reports in the Los Angeles Times — that he was using steroids. Steroids that were never directly detected.
It’s a game of loopholes and obfuscation, so why shouldn’t the fans get to play along at home?