Manny Ramirez got a haircut between Wednesday’s and Thursday’s games against the Phillies but his barber was the one who cleaned up the best. Though Ramirez was “within the rules of cleaning it up a little bit,” according to Dodgers skipper Joe Torre, his locks still make him look like:

• The cousin of Medusa
• A Bob Marley imposter
• A dirty bum
• A damn woman

The weird thing is that Ramirez went hitless in the game after he cut his hair. This comes after Torre said: “He haunts me with this. He says every time he gets a hit, it’s the hair. I say it’s the ability.”

Maybe it’s the hair after all. But whatever it is, his barber is getting paid for doing very little work.

Around the time that Manny Ramirez was addressing the Los Angeles media this afternoon, babbling in Spanish for a large chunk of the time and pissing off the American journalists who had ASAP-deadlines to meet, ESPN.com released a story about Yao Ming appologizing for a comment he made about his future teammate, Ron Artest.

The two things that Manny said in English that popped out were that he’s grateful for the dedication of the Boston fans and he’s gonna start stealing more bases. (He’s stolen 35 since 1993. Fat chance.) But that’s because there were few things he did say in English.

Meanwhile, Yao originally said, “We worry about the new attitude to the team. We are adding talent to the team and we need that, but building team chemistry is important,” regarding Artest. Then he had to talk to Artest on the phone — from China, no less — and straighten things out.

Which, of course, is the right thing to do. If you’re going to be teammates, you gotta be cool. You don’t want another Shaq-Kobe thing going on.

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