If Manny Ramirez’s life was a Saturday morning cartoon (and you’ll have to work hard to convince us otherwise), last night would have been a very special episode where Manny is reminded that everyone still loves him despite the crazy antics he gets into every week (though often in reruns) and that he’s as much a part of the team as anyone else because he hit 500 home runs.

(Manny’s excited because he thinks the 500 Club is a sandwich)

Of course, after the big group hug at the end and Optimus Prime comes out at the end to share a life lesson to cover up for the fact that the whole show is about selling Red Sox merchandise and keep us legal with the FCC, we’ll come back next week to find out he was staring into space when the ball was hit at him or he didn’t kick up enough dirt on his way to first and here we go again.

We love us some Manny. We love his high-fivin’ (also in Baltimore); we love his Billy-like routes to balls; we love his ball-bangin’ ways. We love how he loves soup. We hear incessantly about how it’s a kid’s game, but then we hear too much from some quarters about how Manny’s acting too much like a big kid. To which we respond: we know you are, but what are we?

Please deliver us from gritty. Deliver us from The Way the Game Is Played. And deliver us from “500 home runs doesn’t mean what it used to be your era isn’t as good as ours blah blah steroids”. You know what doesn’t mean as much as it used to? Your face. That’s right. Your doody face. Now we have some games to watch with our friend Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom.