ESPN: Eric Neel: Dodgers fans blindsided by Manny news

And maybe it’s some of this too: As sad, angry and disappointed as the fans are by what Ramirez has done, people around here are also seeing themselves in Manny right now.

I asked a punked-out girl sporting a studded belt around the waist of her Ramirez jersey why she wore it, as we rode down the escalator from the loge to the field level Thursday night. She answered, barely turning her head and with a quick, sharp tongue, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “Come on, we’ve all done things.”

I asked Torre what he felt when he learned Manny had tested positive and he said: “I go back to the person. As tough as it is for us, it’s pretty tough for Manny, too. I know he’s the one that did the wrong thing, and nobody’s trying to cover that up, but it’s something I know he’s sorry about.”

I asked Tony the newly minted season-ticket holder, as he was pulling his Dodgers cap down snug over his faux dreads, if he didn’t feel betrayed. “I do, but I feel responsible, too,” he said. “It’s his mistake and he has to pay for it, and I hate that he did it. But maybe we did it to him, too. We wanted him to be more and more. We wanted home runs every time he stepped to the plate. We wanted him to be Superman, and aren’t none of us Superman.”

And then I asked Chris, the fan of Koufax, if maybe this was something that would push him away from the game and from the Dodgers once and for all, and he shook his head.

“He knows the rules and he broke them and that really disappoints me,” he said. “But he’s a Dodger and … it isn’t always easy … but I’m a Dodger fan; I’m a Dodger too, you know?”