Apparently, when I was watching the Cincinnati Reds destroying the competition early this season, Major League Baseball’s drug policy was destroying Manny Ramirez’ attempts at cheating.

“Major League Baseball recently notified Manny Ramirez of an issue under Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program,” MLB said in a statement.

“Rather than continue with the process under the program, Ramirez has informed MLB that he is retiring as an active player. If Ramirez seeks reinstatement in the future, the process under the Drug Program will be completed. MLB will not have any further comment on this matter.”

The upshot is that Ramirez faces a 100-game suspension for his second positive drug test should he ever want to return to baseball.

But that’s not what my post is about. That’s just the back story. What this post is about is one of the greatest Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy references I’ve ever seen in a sports story. That link takes you to a post by Craig Calceterra talking about some ridiculous comments made by another writer, who essentially blamed Ramirez’ cheating on getting manager Bob Melvin fired from first the Seattle Mariners and then the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Those are both teams that Ramirez never played for, so how does that argument work? Because Melvin’s team didn’t make the playoffs because Ramirez cheated to get his teams to the playoffs. And that, as Calceterra quips, makes Mevin “Agrajag to Manny’s Arthur Dent, continually reincarnated as the next Casey freakin’ Stengel, only to be subsequently killed by Manny, except unlike Arthur Dent, Ramirez did it with malice aforethought.”

Just beautiful. Now, does anyone have some spare time? I’d love to have some to devote to some re-reading of Douglas Adams between Reds games.