SEATTLE — Just when you think the final home-run hitter has waggled his finger at Congress. And the last Cy Young Award winner has lied to Mike Wallace. And the last MVP has fibbed to Katie Couric. And baseball finally appears to have cleaned itself up, Manny happens.

Just when you think the era of performance-enhancing drugs has ended, you wake up Thursday morning to the news that Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez has been suspended for 50 games for violating Major League Baseball's drug policy.

And everything else in baseball, everything else in sports, is buried under this news.

This is serious.

This isn't Manny being Manny. This isn't a quirky all-star getting away with various degrees of mischief and poor sportsmanship, as Ramirez has in the past.

This isn't a case of general managers and managers looking the other way as Ramirez says or does something that disrupts the delicate chemistry of a team.

This is Manny being Rafael Palmeiro. Manny being Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez, Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds.

This is Ramirez reminding us that baseball isn't out of the woods. Players still cheat. Players still are willing to push the envelope, gamble their Hall of Fame careers and their lush legacies for even better numbers and more production.

It's another smack in the mouth for baseball. Another bad-news day for the game. And even though baseball is much cleaner thanks to drug testing, there still are players, maybe a lot of players, who still look for pharmaceutical solutions to survive.

In a statement obviously crafted by members of agent Scott Boras' staff, Ramirez, who is hitting .348, with six home runs and 20 runs batted in, said the drug for which he tested positive — human chorionic gonadotropin — was prescribed by a doctor.

He said what he did was a mistake.

But HCG is a drug commonly taken by steroid users when they are coming off a steroid cycle.

Bottom line? Ramirez was cheating.

This was no mistake. And now, everything he has done in his 18-year, 533-home-run career, will feel tainted. This is another life-changing moment for another baseball superstar.

Now Ramirez will be remembered for the drugs as much as his dreds. He will be remembered for his cheating as much as his hitting. He will be remembered as the biggest name in his sport ever to be suspended.

Remember, Bonds, McGwire, Rodriguez and Clemens only have been implicated. Ramirez, who turns 37 this month, has been busted.

He is the latest in a staggering line of players with Hall of Fame credentials who probably won't be voted into Cooperstown. Add his name to the shameful list that includes Bonds, Clemens, McGwire and Rodriguez.

Ramirez has always been considered a free spirit, a different-drummer kind of player. A pain in the clubhouse, but a power in the batting order. Now people will look at him as just another guy looking for an edge.

The ultimate non-conformist now appears like the game's ultimate conformist. We now know that a lot of Manny's magic came in a vial. He's just another player who betrayed the game.

We shouldn't be surprised, but we can be disappointed.

Now, like a golfer getting a read off a similar putt from a playing partner, Ramirez can study fans' reaction to Rodriguez, who is expected to return from the DL to the Yankees on Friday and play in his first game since he admitted using steroids.

Ramirez can get a "read" from Rodriguez on how he'll be treated when he returns on July 3. The flaky Ramirez may not get scalded the way A-Rod will, but Dodgers fans should be enraged over the damage their left fielder has caused this promising season.

The Dodgers built their team around the guarantees Ramirez brought to their lineup. With Ramirez anchoring the middle, the Dodgers opened a record 13-0 at home and have baseball's best record.

Ramirez is their Kobe Bryant. He is the face of the franchise. There are entire bleacher sections named "Mannywood." He is the sly-smiling picture on every ad campaign.

But he's also another in baseball's long line of superstar cheaters. Another name that will live in infamy.

And Manny being Manny has a whole different meaning now.