The story only broke an hour ago (as I type this), and I already feel like I'm late to the dance with the Manny Ramirez PED soap opera. But oddly, I feel up to (and maybe even over) speed with the whole scenario.

Thank Twitter, I guess.

I didn't even need to pause from my work to get the scoop; Thanks to my handy desktop Twitter client (Nambu, if you're curious), I saw the tweets streaming in -- it started with this gem from @docksquad33, "Omg la times reporting manny wil b suspended fifty games!"

That was it.

From there, mainstream media (@SportsCenter, @nbc_sports) and blogs (@FanHouse, @sportsinfo1010) kept the news coming straight to my desktop. Within minutes I had links to stories detailing the case, videos with analysis, even the fantasy impact of the story ("trade Manny? does he have value? Will be back for final 83 games" from @rotoadvice). "PEDs" and "Dodgers" were instantly top Twitter topics and "Manny Ramirez" shot up the Google trend charts to #1.

And this all happened, literally, in minutes. Behold the power of social media. Hell, I'm even blogging about the coverage already.

It's painfully obvious that this story is a long, long way from over. We'll see all the analysis; Dodger player/fan/coach/management reaction, Manny H.O.F. impact, team outlook for the next 50 games, the list goes on. And while there's no way it will end as swiftly as it began, the story blazed across the internet, making Manny the most discussed name in sports.

Somewhere, Alex Rodriguez is smiling.