Manny Ramirez, walking through the dugout after a news conference before the Dodgers’ game against Arizona in Los Angeles last Friday night, has made entitlement an art form.

AP / Chris Carlson

So Manny is gone, baby, gone, and everyone seems to have an opinion on whether that’s good or bad.

But one thing’s sure, whether you thought he was quirkily lovable or a clown in cleats: He sent out just about every bad message there is.

Call him the anti-role model.

In a perfect world, kids in New England would not have been allowed to watch him, for in his time in Boston he was a walking advertisement for everything that’s wrong with professional sports.

He was paid a ludicrous amount of money to play a child’s game, an amount that made him think he was immune to life’s realities. He had an exaggerated sense of his own importance. He came to believe that he was somehow exempt from both the rules of the Red Sox and the unofficial rules of the game, that everything revolved around him, entitlement as an art form.

And worst of all?

He quit on his team.

Is there anything worse you can say about an athlete?

But this is what Manny did, whatever his reasons. Whether it was part of his strategy to get out of Boston or he simply is a child in a man’s body is ultimately irrelevant.

He also quit on the game.

For something’s very wrong when some aging guy in a weekend softball league tries harder than Ramirez does. It is baseball sacrilege not to run out ground balls, regardless of the reason. It is baseball sacrilege to stay at the plate and admire a home run, as if you are an artist staring at your own creation. It is baseball sacrilege to flub a ball in the field, end up sitting on it, then smile and laugh as if you were in some T-ball game and not the major leagues.

There are unwritten rules for behavior in any sport, and Manny made a mockery of them, for the simple reason that he could. He routinely did things that would make a Little League coach gag, things that wouldn’t be tolerated in a Little League game, never mind one played in Fenway Park. He routinely did things that would have made some old-time ballplayer roll over in his grave.

But this was Manny, and for the longest time we all were the classic enablers — the Red Sox, the media, the fans, all of us. We made excuses for him. We laughed at him. We cheered for him. We quickly forgave his trespasses. We even created a new category for him — Manny being Manny — as if this somehow absolved all his foolishness, as if it somehow made him exempt from any criticism, as if there was good behavior, bad behavior and Manny being Manny.

And what was the underlying message here?

As long as you can hit, you essentially can do anything you want.

Is there a worse message to kids?

Is there a worse message than telling someone that all rules are situational?

This was the environment that surrounded Manny Ramirez. It was part of the culture that long has been a part of the Red Sox, the longtime idea that the stars essentially could do whatever they wanted, as though there always were two sets of rules, one for the stars and one everyone else. An environment that Manny continually took advantage of, to the inevitable consternation of his manager and too many of his teammates.

Curt Schilling talked about that Thursday morning on sports-talk radio station WEEI in Boston. Schilling essentially said that Manny was allowed to get away with things for 7 1/2 years, many of which never made it to the media and the public eye; that this was just the way it was.

For that’s the little sliver of irony here. Manny was able to get away with things with the Red Sox that would make you cringe if you saw a kid getting away with them.

And we know that in a perfect world athletes should not be role models; we also know they are. Kids emulate them, want to be them, mimic them. Watch any Little League game and what jumps out at you is how so many players look like miniature major-leaguers, from the way they dress to the way they act. Professional athletes are role models whether they want to be or not.

And Manny?

He was the poster child for every bad message.

Ultimately, that was his biggest sin here.

There’s no reason to feel sorry for the Red Sox. From the beginning, Manny was a dance with the baseball devil, and Manny lived up to his part. He put up numbers, the Sox won two world titles, and the Sox paid him $160 million. In short, they both got what they signed up for.

There is every reason to feel badly for every youth coach who is trying to teach kids to play the game the right way, and for all parents who are trying to teach kids how to behave. It’s tough enough to do that in a vacuum, never mind in the baseball world, in which one of the highest-profile athletes in the sport is a walking contradiction to everything you are trying to teach.

That is Manny’s legacy, too.

It’s not insignificant.

For it was easy to be seduced by Manny’s quirkiness in his time here. He was one of a kind, and there was an endearing quality to him, something almost childlike, as though everything was happening to him for the first time. But there was a flip side, too, one of entitlement and self-centeredness. He was someone who symbolically spit in the face of the game that made him very rich, and his teammates, too. Someone who should have come with a warning label.

Manny.

The anti-role model.

breynold@projo.com