Ramirez return from drugs ban will start in minor leagues
Agence France-Presse | 05/28/2009 7:55 AM
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DENVER, Colorado – Suspended slugger Manny Ramirez, serving a 50-game doping ban, will be given a minor league assignment before he rejoins the Los Angeles Dodgers in July, Dodgers manager Joe Torre indicated Wednesday.
Ramirez will be eligible to rejoin the Dodgers on July 3.
Torre said prior to the Dodgers' game against Colorado that Ramirez may soon go to the team's spring training facility in Arizona to work out.
Torre added that Ramirez would need some time in the minors to get ready for his return.
"We've still got a ways to go with him," Torre said. "The most important thing was getting all the cobwebs cleaned out with all the things he's going through and that he'll continue to go through until he gets back and starts playing and the questions sort of taper off."
The terms of Ramirez's suspension allow him to train with the team, but he cannot be in uniform at the ballpark when the gates are open for a game.
However, Torre said he thought it best that Ramirez was keeping a low profile.
"More important now for him is to be in a routine and to get himself starting to think ahead as opposed to thinking about what has been going on," Torre said.
Ramirez was suspended on May 7, becoming the biggest name to be banned under Major League Baseball's anti-drugs policy but certainly not the first marquee player to be linked to doping.
In conforming with its policy, Major League Baseball did not announce what banned substance Ramirez used. US media reported that baseball investigators acquired documentary evidence that Ramirez received human chorionic gonadotropin or hCG, a female fertility drug.
It is on baseball's banned list because of it's potential use to restart the body's testosterone production in the wake of a cycle of steroid use.
Ramirez has denied taking steroids and said he was given medication by a doctor that contained a banned substance.
US media have reported that baseball's anti-doping authorities were first alerted to investigate Ramirez after he tested positive for an elevated testosterone level.
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