The booking photo for Manny Ramirez
Baseball player Manny Ramirez was arrested on Monday by Weston, Florida police for an alleged incident of domestic violence. Citing a police report, NBC Miami reported that Ramirez’s wife, Juliana, told the police that the former All-Star hit her with an open hand during an argument.
Authorities said that the 39-year-old Ramirez has denied hitting his wife. According to the NBC report, Ramirez told police that his wife hit her own head after he grabbed her by the shoulders and shrugged. The report noted swelling on the left side of her face in addition to a contusion on the back of her head.
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The situation escalated on Tuesday in light of Manny appearing in court, reported ESPN. Broward County Circuit Judge Jon Hurley set bail at $2,500 on the domestic battery charge and Ramirez was ordered to have no direct contact with Juliana. He spent Monday night in jail.
Ramirez was always one of baseball’s enigmas, despite his stellar numbers. Over a celebrated career, most notably with the Boston Red Sox, where he helped end the team’s 86-year World Series curse (the Sox won the Fall Classic with Ramirez in the side in both 2004, where he was awarded World Series MVP, and 2007), he was a .312 career hitter with 13 seasons of 100-plus RBIs and 555 home runs.
But his quirky baseball mannerisms (answering the call of nature in the middle of a game, high-fiving a fan in the midst of a double play) led to the phrase “Manny Being Manny” being employed as examples of why Ramirez probably couldn’t be considered 100% employable.
The Sox finally had enough and traded him to the Los Angeles Dodgers in July 2008. While he quickly became a fan favorite (and those “Mannywood” signs were cute), the following year would find him test positive for human chorionic gonadotropin, which is a banned female fertility drug often used to help mask steroid use. He served a 50-game ban, which some wags would suggest merely mirrored the amount of games he would have missed due to some other random reason.
He would wind up at the Tampa Bay Rays but only turned out five times for them before abruptly retiring. It transpired that, according to reports, he tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance and, rather than face a 100-game suspension for a second violation of MLB’s drug policy, simply left the game. His retirement has begun in allegedly horrible circumstances. Manny only managed one hit for the Rays but, it would be best for all concerned, if he never had another of any kind ever again. (via LA Times)
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Glen Levy is an Executive Producer at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @glenjl. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.