Manny’s gone, but not forgotten.

AP / David Zalubowski

He is the ghost that hovers over these playoffs.

You can send Manny out to the Dodgers at the trading deadline, but that doesn’t mean he goes away.

So it’s not surprising that here it is roughly two months after Manny left Boston, but he’s still a presence, both in talk shows and conversations, like the relative that moves away but still lingers in the family like some secret. Curt Schilling recently buried him on Boston sports-talk radio station, WEEI, David Ortiz talked about him Tuesday in Anaheim. And if nothing else, the absence of his bat in the middle of the lineup makes the Red Sox less dangerous.

Manny, Manny, Manny.

Sometimes it seems as if it’s all about Manny Ramirez, even when it’s not.

Then again, maybe it always was.

He was always stranger than fiction when he was here, the perennial man-child with the unique ability to hit a baseball as well as few people in the game ever have been able to do. But it never was just about that, of course.

It always was more nuanced, complete with the sense that he was such a fan favorite, the darling of the pink-hat set, part great player, part cartoon, a baseball version of an enigma wrapped inside a riddle.

It still is.

So what are we to make of the news the other day that Manny now says he was unhappy during his eight-year career with the Red Sox?

What are we to make of the news that he now says that when he first got to Boston he told Pedro Martinez he wanted to be traded, saying that “this place was not for me,” ostensibly because people cared too much?

What are we to make of the news that every day in L.A. he thanks God for the chance to be there and be out of Boston?

Are we supposed to take this seriously?

Or is it just Manny being Manny, all part of the sideshow that always seems to be following him around like an entourage follows a pop star.

All this burst into the public arena Sunday in a story in the Los Angeles Times by T.J. Simers, in which the highlight — or maybe lowlight — was Manny’s assertion that baseball was simply too important in Boston, and that “here the game ends, I go the elevator, my car, and no one bothers me.”

Ah, the good life.

It’s no secret that Ramirez has flourished in L.A., where as the old song says, palm trees grow, rents are low, and the feeling is laid-back. What better environment for Manny, who long ago made laid-back into a personal statement? Come to the park, hit the ball, go home, no one bothers you, collect $20 million. What’s not to like?

It’s also no secret Manny has been the perfect citizen out there in La La Land. By all reports, he’s brought a little energy into a clubhouse that was so blah it supposedly was almost comatose.

He’s certainly produced at the plate. Not surprisingly, he’s become a fan favorite, a celebrity in a celebrity town. And we’ve even had Joe Torre praise his work ethic.

On the surface, Manny’s departure to the Dodgers seems to have benefited everyone, given that the Sox started playing better after he left, as if his attitude, general malaise, and the pervading sense that he was quitting on his teammates, had beaten

everyone down.

Schilling is on record saying that all the negative things we knew about Manny were just the tip of the iceberg, that both the Red Sox and the culture of the Red Sox shielded his behavior from the rest of us.

No surprise there.

We all enabled Manny. The Red Sox, fans, we in the media, all of us. We enabled him for several reasons, certainly, not the least was that he was goofy and different, and in a sports world where so many athletes almost seem to come out of the same cookie-cutter, clinging to clichés as if they are lifelines, he could be refreshing. Most of all, though, we enabled him because he was a great hitter.

This is what we do.

Until it became apparent that he had to go, something even his buddy David Ortiz said the other day.

The unfortunate thing is that it ends with all this apparent hostility.

It’s not just the Red Sox that Manny was blowing up in the L.A. Times story, the same team that paid him $20 million a year to hit a baseball.

Nor was it just the media, who he accused of never letting him alone, even if he was infamous in his eight years in Boston of almost never talking to the media, his locker over in a corner of the clubhouse almost symbolic.

It’s all the people who cheered him, rooted for him, essentially forgave him his trespasses. It’s all the people who defended him and made excuses for him and gave him every benefit of the doubt, even in the face of all the evidence.

Even if he tried to give himself some wiggle room in the newspaper article, saying that “the fans in Boston got your back no matter what,” before blowing up both Boston and the culture that surrounds the Red Sox all over again.

That’s what seems so unfortunate about all this, this sense that Manny has such a short memory.

The sense that the two World Series titles seem to mean so little.

The sense that all the cheers and all the money that he received here seems to mean so little.

The sense that he’s now making the claim that his stay in Boston was all some sort of personal prison, something to be endured.

Is it all nonsense, or just Manny being Manny?

Who can ever know with him.

In a perfect world, the Red Sox would win without him, and let Manny be Manny in L.A, out of sight, if not out of mind.

breynold@projo.com