Ramirez leads with homer - and then he is ejected

Manny Ramirez sparked the Los Angeles Dodgers with a home run and was later ejected during his team's 7-2 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Manny Ramirez argues with home plate umpire Doug Eddings after being ejected against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
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Manny Ramirez sparked the Los Angeles Dodgers with a home run and was later ejected during his team's 7-2 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday. The left fielder gave the Dodgers a 1-0 advantage on a solo homer in the second inning, his 17th of the season. In the third innings, Ramirez flung his bat and helmet toward home plate after striking out and was ejected by the umpire.

"I don't want to talk about the home run, I do that all the time," Ramirez said. "I told the umpire I thought it was a ball, then I threw my helmet and he threw me out. It's OK. He's human. He's not a machine." On the field James Loney added another homer in the second inning. Ronnie Belliard had three hits and two RBIs as the Dodgers (82-57) kept their National League West Division lead at three and half games.

The Los Angeles starter Vicente Padilla allowed two runs in six innings before closer Jonathan Broxton recorded his 33rd save. "Padilla gave us six strong innings, and Belliard really gave us a shot in the arm," said the manager Joe Torre. For the Diamondbacks, Max Scherzer allowed four runs and three home runs in seven innings while Chris Young hit a two-run home run in the fifth inning to give him four in the last two games.

The St Louis hurler Chris Carpenter pitched a one-hitter, striking out 10 to lead the Cardinals to a 3-0 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers. Carpenter notched his 11th win in a row, improving to 16-3. He leads the major leagues with a 2.16 earned run average. "Unless it's a certain situation late in the ballgame, or you have a chance to lose the game, or change the game, I'm going to come after you," said Carpenter, who walked two and gave up a clean double to Jody Gerut in the fifth inning. "I'm not wasting pitches."

Carpenter matched his career-best performance when he pitched a one-hitter in 2005 for St Louis against Toronto. The Tampa Bay Rays lost Carlos Pena for the rest of the season when a CC Sabathia pitch hit the slugger on the hand and left him with two broken fingers. Tampa Bay went on to fall 4-1 to the New York Yankees in the first game of a double-header. Pena was hurt on an 0-1 pitch in the first inning, when the ball bounced off his left hand before hitting his bat.

Officials ruled he had swung at the pitch, and after Pena was examined by the trainer Ron Porterfield and manager Joe Maddon for several minutes, he continued batting and swung at a third strike. "It's very discouraging," Maddon said of Pena, who had an American League-leading 39 homers. "He was swinging the bat about as well as anyone I've seen this season." Pena will determine next week whether he needs surgery. "I knew when the ball hit me it was going to be bad," Pena said. "You don't take a 95 mph fastball on the finger and live to tell about it - or the finger live to tell about it."

* Agencies