Trying to get a leg up on Manny Ramirez and the Dodgers

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Won’t you come home, Manny Ramirez, won’t you come home?

OK, so no one seems to be moaning the whole night long. Well, maybe Frank McCourt, since he is paying Ramirez $20 million to play baseball this season. And I understand McCourt doesn’t have much cash.

Ramirez, however, has played in only 61 of the Dodgers’ 112 games this season. Three times he has been on the disabled list because of right leg injuries.

He’s on the DL again, and has been since July 17 because of a right calf strain. He was originally expected to be on the DL for about three weeks, which came and went Saturday. No one seems to have a clue when Ramirez will return.

‘He doesn’t seem close,’ Manager Joe Torre said Thursday.

What is going on?

This being Ramirez, all things are possible, including, of course, that his 38-year-old calf muscle is just really slow to heal.

Now, I don’t pretend to be a medical expert, but more than three weeks for a muscle strain to heal is starting to seem, oh, I don’t know, suspicious.

Dodgers trainer Stan Conte, however, said the muscle affected is not the pretty calf muscle that makes you look all studly when in great running shape, but the interior soleus muscle, which can be tricky.

‘You see guys who can jog fine and do OK, but as soon as they start to sprint the forces are greater on that calf muscle,’ Conte said. ‘That’s why you see a lot of getting close and falling back, getting close and falling back with calves, as opposed to say a hamstring.’

So certainly there’s that. Let’s call that the most likely situation.

But since sportswriters are cynical by nature, or at least forced into it by dealing with management and players, I have to at least wonder.

Ramirez supposedly had a mysterious leg injury in Boston, which seemed to fluctuate from one leg to the other, when he was traded to the Dodgers before the 2008 non-waiver trading deadline. Then if felt just fine, whichever leg it was.

And then, of course, there was the curious trade offer for Ramirez by the Chicago White Sox just before this year’s trading deadline. They offered no players in return, but to pay only $1 million toward his salary.

General Manager Ned Colletti tried not to laugh.

‘I’m not sure what they were trying to accomplish,’ he said.

Hmm? Let’s just get all imaginative here. What if Ramirez is unhappy in Los Angeles? That’s not hard to imagine, just difficult to know, what with him not talking to the media all season for reasons he has never explained.

For a moment, let’s just pretend he is unhappy. Maybe Mannywood wasn’t big enough. Maybe there weren’t enough roses thrown at this feet. Maybe he has just given up on being an outfielder and wants to go to the American League and be a designated hitter.

If so, it’s not too hard to think he has communicated his desire to move to a contender to his agent, Scott Boras, and the suggestion was made to the White Sox, who are contending in the AL Central. And when one word got out, it did cause other clubs to call.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that White Sox advisor Dennis Gilbert, who attends nearly every Dodgers game, remembered how Ramirez helped the Dodgers in 2008 and simply told the White Sox to take a flier on him.

Meanwhile, Ramirez continues his rehab not with the Dodgers, but at the team’s Phoenix spring-training facility. Which in itself seems slightly odd. It’s not like he hasn’t been playing baseball all year and needs to start from scratch.

Torre said he spoke to Ramirez on Friday.

‘He’s getting frustrated,’ Torre said.

On that front, Ramirez can join a growing club. Ramirez, sans female fertility pills, was not the slugger of 2008, but he was still a highly effective hitter (.317, eight home runs, 39 runs batted in in 186 at-bats).

The Dodgers, struggling to score and hang within striking distance of the National League West-leading San Diego Padres, could certainly use him.

And still another days goes by with Ramirez seemingly no closer to returning than a couple of weeks ago.

If something is going on beyond an old guy simply taking a long time to heal, nobody is talking. Nobody is moaning, either, but for how long?

-- Steve Dilbeck