He will forever be … Manny Ramirez *

Long after Manny Ramirez retires the cheers and jeers will stop. He will no longer have the luxury of choking off critics with a single swing of his Louisville Slugger. All that will be left is the man, his character, the numbers on a piece of paper — and a screaming asterisk.

There will be no “cloud of suspicion,” just an admission of guilt that will brand him, for the rest of his active baseball career and into the record books, as a cheat.

Ramirez is not like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa or Mark McGwire. He admittedly used a banned performance-enhancing substance, got caught and, as league rules are defined, was suspended.

Ramirez spent 50 games on the outside looking in.

“Manny was punished, and not insignificantly,” wrote Jon Weisman, author of Dodger Thoughts, in an e-mail to Flushing9.com. “He lost millions of dollars as well as 50 games from a career that realistically doesn’t have much time left. He also may well have lost his spot in the Hall of Fame.”

Still, for some, 50 games is not enough. There are fans and a modern-day media who expect details, answers, the same way they expected them from Alex Rodriguez, Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte.

“It’s certainly his prerogative to choose to say nothing and let the public assume the worst,” wrote Weisman. “He apologized, more than once, to his fans and his teammates. Is there really that much else for him to say? It seems pretty clear that drug use is designed to improve performance. What do we need him to explain?”

Former Arizona Diamondbacks manager Bob Melvin would probably like an explanation. Melvin’s team lost the National League West by two games last season, missing the post-season. Was Ramirez “using” while playing for the Dodgers in 2008? The Diamondbacks were leading the Dodgers by two games on the day Manny was shipped to L.A.

The game of baseball is flawed, like you and I and Manny. Players, the media and fans should be at peace with that fact and the knowledge that the game has taken corrective measures to solve the problem.

“Baseball is tainted and we need to get the trust back … the whole sport is tainted,” Dodgers manager Joe Torre told the media before Monday’s Mets-Dodgers game at Citi Field. “Hopefully we have a grip on it now.”

Weisman agrees that progress is being made since Major League Baseball adopted a drug prevention program and added, “Some people feel that Manny hasn’t been punished enough, and that’s a fair opinion, but I don’t think that finding the 50-game suspension satisfatory signifies apathy.”