newjerseynewsroom.com

The Oakland A’s are willing to find out if Manny can still be Manny.

The A’s are going to give quirky former star Manny Ramirez, who announced his retirement from baseball almost a year ago, a comeback shot.

Ramirez, who will join the team for spring training in Phoenix on Friday, is a non-roster invitee who could earn some $500,000 if he makes it to the A’s — though he would have to sit out a 50-game suspension still pending for a second positive test for performance enhancing drugs.

After results of the test just after the start of the 2011 season, when he was with the Tampa Bay Rays, Ramirez announced his retirement rather than sit out a 100-game ban for the second offense.

Ramirez applied for reinstatement at the winter meetings in December, and representatives of the A’s watched him work out in Florida, according to the Associated Press.

“This is a guy over the course of his career who could jump out of bed in December and hit,” Oakland manager Bob Melvin told Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Ramirez, a native of the Dominican Republic who hit .650 with 14 home runs at George Washington HS in Manhattan in 1991, has hit 555 home runs in his major league career, good for 14th place overall. He’s a career .312 hitter with 1,831 RBIs.

How much he has left isn’t determined, since Ramirez will turn 40 on May 30. But Melvin told Slusser that he doesn’t “know why he wouldn’t” be the team’s designated hitter once he becomes eligible.

The A’s struggled for runs last season, placing 12th out of 14 teams in the American League and finishing the season 74-88, so it’s easy to see why general manager Billy Beane would take a shot with Ramirez.

“You don’t have to hit home runs to drive in runs,” Melvin said. “And if we get to the point where he’s DHing in the middle of the season, he brings stability and experience in that role we don’t have now.”

It has been an interesting winter for Oakland, which traded three young All-Star pitchers during the off-season. Among the team’s additions besides Ramirez is 38-year-old pitcher Bartolo Colon and 26-year-old Cuban defector Yoenis Cespedes, an outfielder.

Ramirez will be issued uniform number 99, according to Slusser.

"I am very pleased Billy was able to add Manny to our team," owner Lew Wolff said in an email, reprinted by the Associated Press. "I look forward to welcoming him and the entire team that Billy and his people have assembled for the coming season."

--JOE GREENE, NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM