Thanks Manny (not really)

Manny Ramirez is making me feel stupid. It has nothing to do with his suspension for violating baseball's substance policy. 

It's about the team he's playing for-- the Albuquerque Isotopes. I learned to spell Albuquerque a long time ago, so it's not that. It's the nickname. Its prompted flashbacks to my failure as a science student. 

I could pretty much talk my way out of (or into) any problem in school. But chemistry demanded knowledge that exceeded my ability to cajole. And the modern day cheat-sheet Wikipedia doesn't make it any clearer:

Isotopes are any of the different types of atoms of the same chemical element, each having a different atomic mass. Isotopes of an element have nuclei with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons.

Huh? Is this really baseball nickname material?

And then there's this entry from something called Mr. Guch's Great Big (Chemistry) Vocabulary List: The word "isotope" doesn't imply that something is radioactive. TV told you that, and TV is stupid.

Ok,that I knew.

So, thanks Manny. Your fifty game suspension I can live with.

But making me feel, well, stupid is inexcusable.