In the same way it’s hard for us to focus on the Olympics while World War III is about to kick off, the Dodgers really have more important things to worry about than Manny Ramirez’s hair (just follow us here). They had to use a walk off homer from Nomar Garciaparra to take a one game lead in the increasingly tight NL West battle yesterday. But the main storyline coming out of the Dodger clubhouse is still whether Manny Ramirez, obtained more than three weeks ago, will cut his dreadlocks per manager Joe Torre’s rules. The “will he/won’t he” issue has been surely been blown up by the media as a way to talk about Ramirez’s inability to abide by anyone’s rules without overtly calling him out on it, but Torre doesn’t care about that (yet). He just wants the hair gone.

“I’m not negotiating anything,” Torre said, not laughing… “He’ll do it. He told me he’ll do it. When he first got here, I asked him, ‘How important is the hair to you?’ And he asked me, ‘Do you want me to cut it?’ So I said, ‘I want you to clean it up a little.”’

It turns out Manny will “do something” some time this week, namely get his hair cut at a place called Fantastic Sam’s, in a promotional stunt that will benefit some Dodgers charities.

One of our fondest memories of growing up in LA was watching the horrible commercials for Fantastic Sams where they made everyone get a freaking perm, like it was the only style they knew how to manage. So let’s hope Manny comes out with only shortened locks, and not like Pedro Martinez’s Jheri Curl look from 1996.

Will Manny be good citizen? That is the question [Newsday]
Image [LA Times]