Manny Ramirez Bobblehead Night, Brought To You By San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino

The best part about the ballgame Wednesday night wasn't that Manny Ramirez hit the first pitch out of the park for a pinch hit grand slam which won the game, nor even that the place was rocking with the loudest cheering Plotnik has heard since 1988, nor that he did manage to buy his own Manny Ramirez 99 blue Dodger T-shirt, the only Medium in a sea of Double X-Ls, inside the gift shop where Manny T-Shirts and Manny fake plastic dreadlocks and Manny pictures and Manny God Knows Whatelses were flying out of the shop like free donuts at the Policeman's Ball, nor that he was sitting next to Ducknik who, while insisting she is still a Giants fan, still had to admit she had never seen anything quite like this --- but that everyone in the Upper Deck, where Plotnik, Ducknik, Ben-Z and Cousin Brother Two Names were sitting, and there were some treacherous-looking homies up there, were hugging and high-fiving each other, screaming at the top of their lungs, laughing and smiling like the Plotzers had just won the World Series, which they hadn't.



In fact, it was a relatively meaningless game in a relatively meaningless point in the very long baseball season. With Bobbleheads.

But that's after-thinking. In the moment, Plotnik was lifted to another spiritual hemisphere by Manuel Ramirez's bat, and 56,000 other people were too. The guy sitting a few seats down kept shouting to his friend: "Dude! Dude! This is why you become a sports fan! Dude!" That was Wednesday Night and right now it's Friday morning and Plotnik is still hoarse. He spent years learning to sing correctly so he wouldn't ever do that to his vocal chords, and in three minutes it all went out the window.

Bedlam. Delirium. It's Manny Ramirez Bobblehead Night, but Manny Ramirez can't play, because he got hit on the wrist with a pitch the previous night. They hand you a bobblehead box as you walk into the stadium.



Back up: Manny Ramirez Bobblehead Night was supposed to be sponsored by the Dodgers' Official Health Care Provider Kaiser Permanente. But after Ramirez got suspended for taking an illegal drug, Kaiser pulled out. Who stepped up to be the new sponsor of Manny Ramirez Bobblehead Night? San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino. Can you get any tackier than that? No sir, you can't.



Manny is sitting at the end of the bench the whole game, number 99 on his back.



Tie game. The Dodgers get two walks. Russell Martin is up and Manager Joe Torre sends Mark Loretta to the on-deck circle to pinch hit for the pitcher who will be up next. But Russell Martin gets a base hit to load the bases. 56,000 people are now screaming MANNY! MANNY! MANNY!

Manny is staring at the front of the dugout where Torre is. Torre nods his head. Loretta walks back to the dugout as Number 99 stretches, gets off his seat on the bench, grabs his helmet and strides onto the field to bat. The crowd goes crazy. MAN-NEE! MAN-NEE!



Manny Ramirez has his own section of fans, in left field, which is now known as MANNYWOOD. Out in Mannywood, fans are jumping up and down and tossing beach balls and screaming their spleens out.

Manager Dusty Baker of the Cincinnati Reds walks slowly onto the field and replaces his pitcher with another one. Nice move, by the way, Dusty.

The new pitcher jogs onto the field to take his warmup pitches, perhaps feeling like a chicken sent out to combat an army of deep friers, while number 99 has disappeared back into the dugout. When the new pitcher is done warming up, out comes Manny again, slowly, like Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath, another great baseball movie. No, wait, not baseball, Dustball. Dust Bowl. Whatever.

Another thunderous round of applause.

He takes his spot in the batter's box, bounces up and down a few times, as he always does. The Great Plotnik takes this picture:



The pitcher decides to test Manny with an inside fastball. Manny hits an absolute rocket, a line drive that takes maybe two seconds to get out of the park for a grand slam home run. Where does it land? In MannyWood, of course.

You thought it was bedlam before? No, that was quiet conversation. THIS is bedlam.

The guy in back of Plotnik shouts in a beautiful chicano accent: "ONE F---ING PITCH, HOMES! NO POINT TO F---ING WAIT AROUND!"

How do you explain this feeling? How does a baseball player, who, by the way, earns $20-$25 million dollars a year, become such an integral part of the lives of everyday people? Plotnik has been to many baseball games, and recently most of those have been up in Saint Plotniko, and he has NEVER seen more people wearing hometown baseball shirts at a game. Not even close. Most of these were Number 99 Ramirez shirts (the one Plottie purchased, incidentally), but there were a lot of 34 Valenzuela shirts too, and Fernando Valenzuela retired two decades ago.





What it is, is that Ramirez is becoming the new Fernando in Stiletto City. He brings people together. Plotnik has read about how, two generations ago, integration happened in the stands long before it happened on the field. In Brooklyn's Ebbets Field, black people sat next to white people and cheered their asses off together, for years. Then Jackie Robinson came along and it became official. But it was real long before it was official.

It felt something like that at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday -- everyday people and gangsters and businessmen and school teachers and, probably, hookers and drug dealers and for sure plenty of guys with bad-ass prison tattoos, Latinos and everybody else too. And what was everybody wearing, or buying: 99 RAMIREZ.

Wow. Wish you were there too.