Dodgers activate Manny from third stint on DL

LOS ANGELES -- Left fielder Manny Ramirez, who has spent almost as much time on the disabled list this season as he has on the field, was activated by the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday night and batting third against Cincinnati.

In the 61 games he did play in entering Saturday, the 12-time All-Star hit .317 with eight homers and 39 RBI.

"Talking to Manny, I asked him, `Do you want to take a day [off] today and play tomorrow?' He said, `I'm ready to go now.' So the only way we're going to find out is to just send him out there and see what we see," manager Joe Torre said. "Am I expecting him to be sharp? Not necessarily. But he knows how to hit.

"Our offense really hasn't been generating a whole lot. They know that he hasn't been playing for really a couple of months. But it's still Manny, and you still know it's in there somewhere. So we'll see if he can catch up and just get in a little bit of a groove."

Ramirez's DL trilogy began on April 23 when he strained his right calf and missed 14 games. He was sidelined for another 11 games in June because of a right hamstring problem, then re-injured his right calf in his second game back and sat another 33 games. He rehabbed for a while at the Dodgers' spring training Facility in Arizona, then had a three-game stint with Class-A Inland Empire and reported no problems.

"When he came back from Arizona, I was able to come out here and really run him," trainer Stan Conti said. "We really got him at a high intensity and I wanted to find out of if he was going to have anything [wrong] while he ran. We timed him on the bases and made him run hard. He had no problems then and had no soreness.

"He was able to play in San Bernardino the next day, and he's played three days with absolutely no problems," Conti added. "That was the sequence of events that convinced us that today could be the day. We would have liked to have him on base a little bit more to try and test it out a little bit more, but he had no soreness today. So there's some point where you think that medically, he's OK. But anybody can get a pulled muscle at any time."

The Dodgers, fourth in the NL West with a 62-61 record after back-to-back division titles, were a combined 26-33 during Ramirez's absence.

The enigmatic slugger, who said at the start of training camp that this would be his final season with the Dodgers, is in the final year of a two-year contract and becomes a free agent at season's end at age 38. Ramirez is 14th on the career home run list with 554, nine shy of Reggie Jackson's total.

"He can still hit," general manager Ned Colletti said. "And when you have a guy in the middle there, it just filters down."

"He's dangerous. And when he's out there, the other team feels, `Well, with him out there, we can pitch around so-and-so and we can get through this lineup.' It makes it easier to get through a lineup without a guy with that kind of bat," he said.

To make room on the 25-man roster, the Dodgers designated infielder Juan Castro for assignment. If he clears waivers, he'll probably be brought back on Sept. 1 when the rosters are expanded to a maximum 40 players.