One more time it was Manny being Manny, but as bad as that cliché is, in this instance it’s true. Manny was being Manny, that is, he was being stupid, and now he is being retired.

We won’t have Manny to kick around anymore, and he spent the better part of his 17-year career making himself an easy target.

One of the best hitters in history, Ramirez was an even bigger enigma for nearly two decades, and he remained an enigma to the end.

Why, only two years after being nailed with a 50-game suspension, did he repeat his violation of baseball’s drug program, test positive for performance-enhancing drugs and subject himself to a 100-game suspension?

At the age of 38, about to turn 39, Ramirez might have felt desperate to find something that would speed up his slowing bat and enhance his production, but he also knew that, if nailed again, he would face a certain insurmountable barrier to a return to active status.

Players of Ramirez’s age just don’t come back so easily unless they are knuckleball pitchers. Ramirez might be a knucklehead, but he’s not a knuckleballer.

Major League Baseball did not announce that Ramirez was caught using illegal stuff again, but the one-paragraph news release might as well have said it:

“Major League Baseball recently notified Manny Ramirez of an issue under Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. 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.”

In other words, Ramirez tested positive and will have to serve a 100-game suspension before he could play again. Thus, on the Hall of Fame plaque he is virtually certain never to have in Cooperstown, it could list his .312 career batting average, his .411 on-base percentage, his .585 slugging percentage, his 1,831 runs batted in, his 555 home runs and his status as the first two-time drug loser at the cost of 150 games.

(Neifi Perez was suspended twice in 2007 for a total of 105 games for use of amphetamines.)

Actually, Ramirez might have tested positive three times, which would make his history with illegal performance-enhancing substances even more mind boggling.

Acting on information gained by inducing lawyers or law clerks to violate the law (a court order), The New York Times reported in 2009 that Ramirez’s name appeared on a list of about 104 players who allegedly tested positive in baseball’s 2003 anonymous survey testing.

The problem with that list was that it was never established that all of the players on it tested positive. Just because the Times reported it didn’t make it so. The Times at that time was so eager to reveal names it would have named Elmer Fudd if some low-level law clerk had said his name was on the list.

Whether Ramirez tested positive in 2003 is irrelevant. Positive tests did not produce punishment that year, and testing positive twice is more than enough to speak to the intelligence and the motives of a player.

Whether or not you agree with the prohibition, it exists, and it’s stupid to take the chance that Ramirez did twice.

Ramirez never exhibited the highest level of intelligence in his student days at George Washington High School the Washington Heights section of Manhattan.

That’s where Sara Rimer discovered him. Not that Ramirez was unknown. He was very well known in the Dominican community near the George Washington Bridge, and Rimer chronicled his progression toward professional baseball for the Times, which claimed him as the newspaper’s own.

Whenever Cleveland, Manny’s first team came to New York to play the Yankees, the obligatory assignment went out, and the baseball writers held their breath, no one wanting to hear the editor’s words: “We need a story on Ramirez.”

It wasn’t that Ramirez was a bad story; he was a good young player who was worth writing about. But he posed a major drawback. He was so shy he would not talk to reporters. He would not answer a question, wouldn’t respond to the simplest statement.

He didn’t get much better as he grew up in the majors. He especially shied away from subjects he didn’t want to talk about, and that included most anything that wasn’t strictly about baseball.

A particularly sore subject with him was any mention of his old high school and his baseball coach there, Steve Mandl. This was an attempt at a conversation with Ramirez about his lack of interest in helping his old team financially.

Mandl had told me he had never asked Ramirez for a donation, but he said $10,000 would buy new uniforms and equipment for the players so I raised the matter with Ramirez.

“I was talking to your old high school baseball coach,” I began our brief conversation at Yankee Stadium.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Ramirez said without waiting to hear the question.

“Will you talk about your interest or non-interest in donating anything to the school?”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Ramirez said.

“Is that a sore subject with you?”

“No. You want to talk about the game, I’ll talk to you about the game.”

Someone had suggested that Ramirez had a problem with Mandl, so later in the conversation, I asked, “Is there a problem that can be fixed?”

Ramirez said he didn’t have a problem with anybody.

“With Steve Mandl?” I asked.

Ramirez repeated that he didn’t have a problem with anybody.

A couple of years later I raised the issue again. The Red Sox had just won the World Series, and Ramirez had earned a $150,000 bonus as the most valuable player. How easy it would be, I thought, for Ramirez to take $10,000 of that bonus and give it to the high school team.

“Unfortunately, we keep waiting and hoping, but it doesn’t happen,” Mandl said at the time.

“He’s sort of distancing himself more and more from the school, his community, his friends. He was an icon here. He has become just another superstar whom they like as opposed to the demigod he used to be.”

Jeff Moorad, Ramirez’s agent at the time, indicated that Ramirez would do something for the team, but nothing was forthcoming.

Many players give money to their high schools and colleges, especially these days when salaries are so high. They give money for other causes, too. Two notable recent examples: Ichiro Suzuki gave $1.4 million and Daisuke Matsuzaka $1 million to the Japanese relief effort following the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Several readers criticized me at the time for telling Ramirez what he should do with his money, and some will probably criticize me now.

But people work all the time to raise money for charity, for cancer, for other worthy causes. What’s wrong with a reporter trying to raise money for kids who play baseball where a fallen star once played the same game?