Plaschke: The reason isn’t clear, but Manny Ramirez isn’t right

Ready those Plaschkeypads!

Although the official explanations for his slump involve those habits, and are technical and convoluted, those familiar with steroids quietly submit one simple reason: Ramirez trying to kill the ball to overcompensate for the fact that he’s no longer juiced, attempting to show everyone that his previous success was him and not the steroids. There are those who also wonder whether he is struggling with the loss of that invincible feeling that steroids give hitters, a syndrome commonly associated with those who are struggling to find themselves after coming clean.

Some, like Jason Giambi, can overcome this feeling and learn to be a good hitter again. Others, like Sammy Sosa, never could.

Of course, it could be just the hand. That was my first question to him Friday night, asking whether the hand had been quietly bothering him for five weeks.

“That was nearly months ago and you ask me about it now?” he said.

“Well, something is wrong,” I said.

At this point, teammate Orlando Hudson, apparently feeling that the personable Ramirez required protection from the media, chimed in with a high-pitched ridicule.

“Why do we strike out?” he said. “Why do we ground out?!”

Hudson was hitless in four at-bats Friday, and has scored all of seven runs this month, but this wasn’t about him,

In Ramirez’s case, all the questions are legitimate. Why, indeed?

“Tomorrow is another day,” he said, hustling out the door. “You want to ask me any more questions, text me.”