I am sitting about 10 feet from my refrigerator.

Hanging from the upper part of that fridge, fixed by a magnet to the metal of the freezer door, are four Dodgers tickets.

And not just any Dodgers tickets. But to a day and a game I very carefully and specifically picked out. July 22, a Wednesday, vs. the Cincinnati Reds.

Manny Ramirez bobble head night.

Or as it now can be known, “The Drug Cheat’s Doll Night.”

Can I get a refund?

In case you’ve been under a rock all day today, or incommunicado in some unpleasant building since before dawn (as I was), Manny Ramirez has been suspended for 50 games by baseball for violating its drug policy.

I will leave the specifics of what he did to the news stories you can find on all the usual newspaper and sports news Web sites. (espn.com alone has about 25 items on it, and I exaggerate only slightly.)

The gist of it is … he took a drug that can both generate testosterone … as well as mask other drugs that more directly dump it into your body. Getting juiced, that is.

As I look back on my record on Manny, on this blog, I wish I could say “I told you this guy was trouble … and I never, ever relented in that opinion.”

But I didn’t. I flip-flopped right there in the middle, suggesting that the Dodgers ought to sign a guy I, originally, was sure was a cancer when he quit on the Boston Red Sox last summer and went to the Dodgers at a bargain-basement price — just because the Red Sox wanted him gone. I warned Ned Colletti not to trade for him, then did an item about how awful it was that he had. And that was my take.

I should have stuck to that. First impressions, and all, usually being right.

On Oct. 6, in a moment of weakness — or maybe I was bored? (Hey, wait, I had just gotten to Hong Kong, and I was still jetlagged. It’s on the other side of the world. It’s about temporary insanity. Don’t buy that?) Anyway, on Oct. 6 I suggested on this blog that the Dodgers should re-sign the guy, maybe to three years.

That was wrong. That was short-sighted. I should have stuck with my original contention, that Manny was a bad idea for the franchise — even without knowing Manny was a drug cheat.

I got it right just the other day, thank goodness, suggesting that L.A. Times columnist Kurt Streeter was crazy for suggesting the same thing I did last October, except apparently moreso — that the Dodgers ought to sign Manny far into the future. Maybe for a four-year contract from where we are now, which would project out to 2013 if we use 2010 as Year 1.

That struck me as crazy, and I said so.

I like to think I had arrived at the correct spot, the other day: Recognizing Manny could still contribute, that the Dodgers’ marketing scheme was about 90 percent about Manny, and acknowledging how massively popular he was among fans.

But having a very, very bad feeling about committing to him indefinitely. Too old. Too much baggage. Even without the drugs.

Now, he has been busted for drugs. In an era where only the dopiest of players — and I thought Manny was an airhead, but at least street-smart — are getting caught.

So, there he goes, for 50 games. Let’s see what the rest of the Dodgers can do. They have a decent core of young players. They don’t have enough pitching, but they didn’t have enough at the start of the season. But it may not matter, considering the division they are in. At least in getting to the postseason.

I can’t really say I’m angry at Manny. I’ve heard and read some indignant/sad/pathetic things out there about how ticked off some people are and how disillusioned others are.

I went through that years ago, starting with Mark McGwire and certainly lasting no later than Floyd Landis, the dorky cyclist who magically came up with the greatest ride in cycling history to win the 2006 Tour de France.

I’m way past being shocked or surprised, so Manny the Drug Cheat doesn’t change my view of the world. Except perhaps as far as not automatically being suspicious that Manny was juiced for who-knows-how-long. I’m a little surprised and disappointed in myself as professional sports cynic that I wasn’t suspicious about that, too, given recent baseball history.

But, I suppose, that was because Manny had other issues that seemed to grab our attention even before we considered the drugs thing, and that blinded me to taking the next step. The “and does he dope, too?” step. He already has really basic issues. Like not bothering to try whenever the mood struck him. Quitting on a team that gave him $160 million over eight years. Being especially mercenary in a particularly mercenary sport.

So, Manny … what do the Dodgers do about this?

For starters, they hold a meeting (and this probably already has happened) and vow never, ever to hitch their entire marketing scheme to someone as uniformly flaky/undependable/erratic as Manny Ramirez.  Don’t let one guy prompt you to rename a section of the stadium after him. Don’t sell wigs based on a guy’s haircut (or lack of same). Don’t spend half your merchandising budget on paraphernalia related to that one guy. Cuz he’s undependable, for goodness sakes, and there is a mountain of history to back that up, and what do you do with those crates of jerseys/dolls/key chains when he falls off the wagon?

Done? Done.

Should the Dodgers even take him back? Let me mull this.

On one hand (and this is moral relativism, but …), Everyone Was Doing It is becoming something of a legitimate excuse. It now seems that, yes, everyone was doing it. Everyone who hit 50 homers or more, anyway, from about 1995 forward. It doesn’t forgive him, or McGwire or Bonds or Sosa, but we now have a little more context. If you didn’t juice, you didn’t keep up. That’s now what appears to have happened.

Also, baseball has a system of punishment in place, and Manny isn’t fighting the suspension, and he will sit his 50 games. He will pay the price (and it will cost him something like $7 million in salary) that the game has attached to breaking its drug rules. In the real world, a guy does his prison sentence, we’re supposed to give him another chance, right?

(Heck, the New York Yankees are about to take back Alex Rodriguez, who has admitted to drug use for a period of three years and is the subject of a book that suggests his drug history is far longer than that. Maybe we have reached a cynical but realistic point in time where we just acknowledge “this stuff happened” and go back to playing the game, as long as guys serve out their penalties.)

On the other hand …

How much of an ignoramus is this guy if he gets caught in May of 2009, when it is clear baseball actually is testing players and actually is punishing them? Do you want a guy who is that dumb/entitled/blind on your team? OK, we will give him a pass on maybe being juiced 5-10 years ago, but given the tests in place in recent seasons, doesn’t that make him an even bigger cheat, when he fails a test of (apparently) recent vintage? And less deserving of our forgiveness? Now that guys are “mysteriously” losing weight and getting smaller?

And it’s not as if he’s come clean here, is it? He has run out a ridiculous story about how it was a health issue, that he didn’t know what he was taking and it was prescribed by some doctor he didn’t really know … blah, blah, blah.  At least, yes, A-Rod admitted on camera he did some of the drug cheating attached to his name. Manny hasn’t admitted to that, yet.

And does the club want to go through something like three months, at least, of a massively awkward situation where you decide to keep the guy in large part because you have a million “99” jerseys being shipped? Because you sold thousands of “Mannywood” tickets (and the T-shirts that go with them) all the way into September? Doesn’t it make more sense to get the guy out of the spotlight by just cutting him loose?

This is a difficult subject.

My own flip-flopping on the “shall he stay or shall he go” Manny issue — and my call to re-sign the guy was on Oct. 6 of last year — wasn’t for the best of reasons. It was about what he brought to the lineup and what he did for the club, the enthusiasm Manny engendered among L.A. fans. Yes, mostly it was about a pure hitter and his marketability. (That is, for a moment I was thinking like Frank McCourt and the guys who work in his marketing department.) I knew, even then, that he absolutely could rot out the insides of the club, eventually. I recommended overlooking that for the sake of expedience, which is never a good idea. (Yes, note to self.)

But by last week I had realized that you can’t have a guy that shaky — and remember, he had done nothing at that point to sully his local rep as anything other than the dopey/lovable flake wandering around left field and hitting balls into the seats — as the recipient of a long and hugely expensive guaranteed contract.

I had decided you don’t commit to that kind of guy. Make him play for his contract every year — and if someone else wants to spend far into the future on a guy with a spotty rep — not to mention a history of injury and an inability to play defense — well, let them.

So, force me to make a call?

Take him back, after his 50 games (the Dodgers have suggested they will) but only if he admits to cheating. I can handle a repentant drug cheat. I can’t handle an unrepetant one, and neither should fans.

Meanwhile, tone down the Mannymania as much as possible. Get him out of the marketing spotlight as best you can. Tell him, and let fans know, that he has one strike, and with two strikes he is out out out, now now now.

Meantime, what do I do with those four tickets stuck to my fridge?

I probably go to the game, get the Manny bobble head …

And put it here on the desk, where it can nod mockingly at me when I’m pounding on the desk top computer. And let it remind me that character counts, and that you don’t bet a franchise on a guy whose character was already in question.