Dodgers’ Mannywood campaign suspended

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Many questions still linger a day after Dodgertown lost its newest neighborhood: Mannywood.

How will the Los Angeles Dodgers play with their star-slugger Manny Ramirez suspended 50 games for taking performance enhancing drugs?

Did Ramirez make a mistake or did he take the drugs knowingly?

What good reason would Ramirez have for taking human chorionic gonadotropin, or HCG, a female fertility drug also known for being used to replenish testosterone levels after a cycle of steroid use?

And what is Dodger Stadium going to do with all those Manny T-shirts, jerseys, wigs and billboards spattered across Los Angeles?

While some answers will arrive in the weeks and months ahead, the Dodgers have addressed questions about how they’ll handle marketing and merchandising in today’s front-page article by L.A. Times sports writer Bill Shaikin.

• Billboards around town and radio, television and Internet ads that feature Ramirez and the words, ‘I’m back’ will be taken down, replaced by a new campaign, ‘This Is Our Town,’ focusing on Dodgertown branding and featuring various celebrities and players such as Rafael Furcal, Russell Martin and Andre Either.
• But that doesn’t mean the Dodgers are ditching Ramirez altogether. ‘For a short period of time, we were definitely hitching our wagon to Manny,’ Dodgers President Dennis Mannion said. ‘We’re not going to crop Manny out.’
• Ramirez T-shirts and jerseys remain available in the team stores, and not at a discount. T-shirts are $30 and replica jerseys $280.
• Manny Ramirez bobblehead night, scheduled for July 22, won’t be canceled.
• The Mannywood section in left field, introduced on Cinco de Mayo, will be renamed 90090, after the new zip-code assigned to Chavez Ravine by the U.S. Postal Service. The team has yet to determine whether the Mannywood section name will return in July, when Ramirez does.
• 90090 seats, formerly known as Mannywood seats, will still sell in a $99 package of two tickets adjacent to left field, were Ramirez played, and fans can now choose between two Mannywood T-shirts or two Dodgers T-shirts.
• Refunds will be offered at the Chavez Ravine ticket office for fans who bought Mannywood tickets in anticipation of seeing Ramirez play. Those looking for refunds can also call the ticket office at (323) 224-1365.

-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles