It’s rare in this life that you get to see the kind of justice we were treated to this week watching Manny Ramirez’ baseball career end in disgrace. There couldn’t be a more appropriate ending than to see him slink away from the game like the coward he is. One step ahead of the steroid posse. Exposed as a fraud. Alone in the world with no one to defend him. And most fitting of all, quitting rather than standing up and facing the music.

And I say this, surprisingly enough, as someone who spend Manny’s 7 2/3 years in Boston defending him. From the beginning of his Red Sox career, Manny had detractors. Baseball purists hated his goofy, lackadaisical approach to the game. The media criticized his callow indifference to his team, the fans and themselves. From almost Day 1 of his Sox career, my brother Jack was ripping Manny a new sphincter for deciding that $160 million wasn’t enough money to run out more than a few, select ground balls and popups.

And I defended Ramirez against the criticism not because I didn’t agree with it — I most certainly did — but because there was nothing about Manny that didn’t come exactly as advertised. From the moment Dan Duquette succeeded in chasing Manny and agent Jeff Moorad down at the 2000 winter meetings and got him to sign a contract like a 14-year-old Beleiber getting Justin’s autograph, we knew what we were getting. Because he’d done the same thing throughout his Cleveland career.

Manny would pout. He’d take days off. He’d wouldn’t bother to run out grounders and popups. In the field he’d turn the laziest popups into the Labors of Hercules. He’d do inexplicably stupid things like run into outs or lose track of how many outs there were. You could set the calendar on your digital watch by the weekend in August he’d inevitably fake a hammy pull in order to get out of a weekend series, and to hell with everybody if his team needed him.

He’d also hit better than anyone in baseball. He’d drive in runs by the Red Line-at-rush-hour carload. He’d be the most consistent right-handed power bat of his generation. And he did all of the above to the point that I will argue with anyone that he represents the single best free agent signing in all of sports.

I can sum Manny’s entire existence with two short quotes:

•From Pedro Martinez: “Manny’s weird, man.”
•And from ESPN’s Mike Greenberg, a Yankees fan: “I’ve never seen him make an out.”

So sure, I defended him. Not because I thought he was St. Francis of Assisi, but because he came as advertised. This was all what we’d signed up for. To me, complaining when he’d drag his bat back to the dugout before his infield popup was on its way back down was like climbing into a shark tank holding a pot roast and complaining when you got bitten.

And besides, I’ve won a million bar bets with this gem of a question: “Who was the Sox clean-up hitter the year before Manny signed?” The answer is Troy O’Leary. A peach of a guy, someone who hustled all the time and whom you’d love to have over your house for a BBQ. But he was also good for about 90 RBIs a year, something Ramirez usually had by the All-Star Game. (Which he would be voted into as a starter but then invariably make up some phony baloney injury so he could skip it.)

Of course, the transgressions I’ve mentioned so far are just Manny’s misdemeanors. Dogging it on the basepaths is a pretty minor offense when you check a guy’s CORI and see felony convictions for things like blowing off Jimmy Fund cancer patients, refusing to meet with wounded soldiers at Walter Reed or decking middle-aged club employees. But taking this record of offenses as a whole, adding to it him quitting on his team in July of 2008 and three — count 'em, three — positive drug tests and you have to admit that by any standard, this is a pretty despicable human being.

Which is not an admission that I was wrong to root for Manny. As I said all along, I defended him on the basis of one thing and one thing only: He could rake. I didn’t like him or the way he approached the game. But for damned sure I didn’t want to be in the bathroom when he came to the plate.

Now the point that I’ve been working up to … and taking forever, I admit … is that some guys make it hard for you to root for them. I’ve never pretended to be anything but a fanboy, a shameless, biased homer who’s not embarrassed to root for laundry. And even I’ve had a hard time cheering for certain guys. Some for the way they play on the field. Some for how they conduct themselves off the field. And some rare types such as Manny, for both. As a matter of fact, I’d put him as the gold standard. The one athlete against whom all other difficult-to-make-yourself-cheer-for athletes should be measured.

So on that note, here are my personal choices for the Hardest to Root for Boston Athletes of the last 20 years, graded on the Manny Scale (™ Jerry Thornton, all rights reserved):

10. JD Drew
•Disliked for his on-field or off-field activities? On field
•Reasons why: For being an injury prone, passionless drone who takes more days off than a Turnpike worker.
•Mitigating factors: Seems like a good guy, a family man. Liked by his teammates, coaches and the media. Won a World Series and hit a huge Grand Slam.
Manny Scale ™ Rating: 1.0

9. Laurence Maroney
•Disliked for his on-field or off-field activities? On field
•Reasons why: A highly regarded first-round draft choice of whom we expected great things. When the Pats picked him, Peyton Manning allegedly called Tom Brady and said “You guys stole our running back.” And we were treated to four-plus frustrating years of him getting to the hole then doing the “Twist and Shout” parade sequence from “Ferris Bueller.”
•Mitigating factors: Despite the caution flags thrown up by him having an SUV with the Kool-Aid Guy detailed into the side, you never heard a word about him off the field until after he was traded to Denver and got popped for possession of weed. Though I still wish he’d run through the line like Kool-Aid Guy.
Manny Scale ™ Rating: 1.5

8. Hal Gill
•Disliked for his on-ice or off-ice activities? On-ice.
•Reasons why: He was 6-foot-7 but played like he was 5-foot-7 and when it came to going into the corners he acted like my lovely trophy wife does when she has to go into a room that has a bug in it.
•Mitigating factors: Gill’s Bruins were too irrelevant to get worked up about.
Manny Scale ™ Rating: 2.0

7. Wade Boggs
•Disliked for his on-field or off-field activities? Both, but mostly off-field.
•Reasons why: He was obsessed with his own numbers. He once referred to himself in the third person three times in one sentence. Once let a teammate get thrown out on a hit and run because, “Wade Boggs does not swing at the first pitch.” Tore the team apart with his poor choice of road beef. Claimed he escaped a man who pulled a knife on him by “willing myself invisible.”
•Mitigating factors: He’s in the Hall of Fame. He got on base 300 times a year, guaranteed. And a man who shotgunned 64 Miller Lites on one plane trip can drink from my canteen anytime.
Manny Scale ™ Rating: 3.0

6. Edgar Renteria
•Disliked for his on-field or off-field activities? On-field
•Reasons why: We thought Tony La Russa was just being a sore loser when he warned us that Rent-a-wreck wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure of playing in Fenway every day. And he proved it by acting like every game we were forcing him to walk the Green Mile.
•Mitigating factors: After getting traded to the Braves, he said he was much happier playing in Atlanta. They were in last place at the time. So at least we know it was him and not us.
Manny Scale ™ Rating: 4.0

5. Adalius Thomas
•Disliked for his on-field or off-field activities? Both
•Reasons why: The biggest, splashiest free agent signing of the Belichick era had an interception in his first game as a Patriot. And that concludes his list of accomplishments. He did nothing on the field after that. Was a healthy scratch for two games in 2009 in which the Pats outscored their opponents 79-10. He was late for a meeting that 49 other players made it on time to, including his superstar QB who’s wife had just had a baby, then blamed the fact that there was traffic and he doesn’t have a George Jetson flying car.
•Mitigating factors: They cut him in 2010 and no other team would touch him.
Manny Scale ™ Rating: 5.5

4. Dice-K
•Disliked for his on-field or off-field activities? Both
•Reasons why: His pitching style of circling the mound between every pitch and running every count to 3-2 should be banned by the UN as a human rights violation. And when the Sox babied him through his disastrous 2008 season, he complained about the way they were handling him, which took no less than six months off poor Terry Francona’s life.
•Mitigating factors: The 2007 World Series. Ten million t-shirts sold.
Manny Scale ™ Rating: 6.0

3. Antoine Walker
•Disliked for his on-court or off-court activities? On-court
•Reasons why: 'Toine’s maddening insistence of keeping his 6-foot-9 frame as far away from the basket and blindly lobbing 3s defined the awful Celtics teams of the '90s. As did that asinine Walker Wiggle that no one but him ever liked.
•Mitigating factors: He blew all his money in Vegas and is currently playing in an over-40 semi-pro league or something just to pay his bills, so I’ll be kind.
Manny Scale ™ Rating: 7.0

2. Carl Everett
•Disliked for his on-field or off-field activities? Both
•Reasons why: Played for the Sox during two Family Day promotions. In the first one he conducted an insane tirade that carried over into the Sox dugout and was really only funny for the first 20 minutes. On the second, he got tossed for arguing balls and strikes, then grabbed his junk in the direction of the ump. In the first workout following the 9/11 massacre — with the country still in a state of shock — he got into a beef with Joe Kerrigan in which he followed the manager around screaming in his face for reasons no one ever really understood.
•Mitigating factors: For the first month or so, his disbelief in dinosaurs and moon landings was kind of kooky and endearing. But it didn’t last.
Manny Scale ™ Rating: 8.5

1. Roger Clemens
•Disliked for his on-field or off-field activities? Both.
•Reasons why: Where do you begin with this selfish, pompous, lying, egomaniacal, money-grubbing phony? How about the time he showed up to spring training late then made hapless, pathetic new manager Butch Hobson jog after him like a Trekkie trying to get a word with Leonard Nimoy at Comic-Con? Or the fact that he didn’t start using steroids until after he left Boston so he went 40-39 in his last four years when we could’ve used him. Those as good a place as any.
•Mitigating factors: None. Unless he gets led away in handcuffs in answer to my prayers.
Manny Scale ™ Rating: 9.5.

So, congratulations, Manny. You might be a disgrace and have cost yourself any chance of getting into Cooperstown, but at least when it comes to the Manny Scale, you’re the only Perfect 10.

Follow Jerry on Twitter @jerrythornton1.