I was at Manny Ramirez’s first game at Fenway, when he drilled his first pitch for a home run over the Monster. I was there last year, in Game 2 of the ALDS, when he hit an absolute bomb over the left-field light towers to deliver the electrifying, walk-off win. And I was there for countless at-bats in between, aware that I was witnessing a Future Hall of Famer at work, aware that greatness was possible whenever he stepped up to the plate.

That’s over now. Now, the Red Sox have moved one of the smartest and most dangerous hitters in the game, a hardball god who, no matter what his other faults, always worked his ass off at hitting, for a hitter who, though younger and skilled, is of course a mere mortal.

This is looking more and more like a trade Boston’s front office wanted to make for personal reasons and less and less like a good move for baseball reasons. In addition to Ramirez, they also had to give up two good prospects who, even if they didn’t fit with Boston, could have been used to help get us something we actually needed, such as a quality lefty reliever, a young catcher, or a third base prospect. Instead, they chose to respond to a crisis that they themselves helped manufacture, with a deal that shipped their most productive hitter out of town. It may yet work out—but on balance, it’s not a good way to run a business.

So far I don’t see anyone in Boston interested in hearing the other side of this catfight—namely, Manny’s side. Nope, his complaints are dismissed as half-crazed whining. The airwaves and newspapers are filled with “Manny’s a bum, Manny’s a selfish child, Manny’s had to go.” I’m not saying those things aren’t true—I’m just saying there are two sides to every story. And so far, we’ve really only heard one. After all, unflattering anecdotes about Manny have been leaking out of Yawkey Way offices for a month now at about the rate that oil leaked out of the Exxon Valdez.

The Red Sox seemed oddly interested in escalating the controversy, creating a sense of crisis, and publicly humiliating their player—an attitude that may have decreased his trade value. As someone who lives in this city, I’m getting mighty tired of us/the FO/the media/large swaths of fans having to trash every good player who leaves town. Whatever happened to the bland-but-inoffensive, “The organization’s decided to make a change”? Although Manny, oddly enough, also did plenty to drive his own value down, once it became clear the Red Sox were not interested in giving him the four-year deal he wanted; this may have actually been a strategy to force a trade and wiggle his way out of the two option years on his contract, which had become an albatross. That, of course, brings you to Scott Boras—the man who announced A-Rod’s opt-out during the World Series last year. He’s got to be happy that Manny will be a free agent at the end of this season. After all, a four-year deal will be much more lucrative for Boras than the big fat goose egg he would have gotten had the Sox picked up Manny’s option.

There’s generally a Manny firestorm every year, so at first, I wasn’t particularly interested in this one. However, when it didn’t blow over, the writing on the wall quickly came into focus. Management was not playing the same game this time around—someone on Yawkey way had to call Bob Lobel with that intentional-strikeout story. As Lobel himself said, it’s not like it came to him in a dream.

And frankly, I know Manny makes about eleventy quadrillion dollars more than I do, but if some reporter came along and looked at all my sick days, I have to admit they’d notice that a few came on the Fridays before long weekends, or on 80-degrees-and-sunny June Mondays. So I would feel hypocritical calling out Manny for skipping work over the All-Star break. (Key AL East games? Different story.) As for the idea that he has faked knee injuries, the experience of having a boyfriend who recently underwent what was supposed to be “minor, noninvasive” knee surgery and ended up on crutches for almost two months has made me a little sympathetic to mysterious, lingering knee problems (and it’s worth noting that my honey’s issue never showed up on MRIs, either).

Plus, I’m getting a feeling from what I’ve read today in the Globe and the Herald, and what I’ve heard on WEEI, that there’s a sense among the commentariat that the city of Boston enabled Manny. In fact, certain pundits are practically foaming at the mouth at the opportunity to slam fans for the way we indulged and spoiled the slugger. Excuse me? Was Manny Ramirez not a grown man when he came here? And did he ever show the slightest inclination to let anyone—manager, teammate, fan, Dan Shaughnessy—affect his behavior on or off the field? Then there’s the ever-popular idea that Manny is some sort of idiot savant, a talented athlete who succeeded despite his work ethic, not because of it, and who has been “babied and pampered his whole life,” to quote the WEEI caller I heard this afternoon. I guess that caller also spent high school waking up at 5:30 in the morning to go running in the Bronx, a tire tied to his waist dragging behind him.

But I suppose, when a hitter of Manny’s caliber is forced out of town—forced by the front office, forced by his own disruptive behavior, and encouraged by his agent—we have to find a way to talk ourselves into his replacement. And Jason Bay, helpfully, walked into the Fenway circus and delivered a key diving catch and the go-ahead run in Friday night’s game. (Manny, I know, could never have made that catch, or stretched the extra-inning double into a triple. But the cynic in me says that with Manny in the lineup, the Red Sox wouldn’t have needed extra innings to score their second run.)

So I wish Manny well with his new team. I wish that now, the Red Sox could go back to winning and the city could just sheeeeuuuuuuut up. And I really, really wish I could overhear that first conversation between Manny Ramirez and Jeff Kent.

Let’s go to the links.

Read the rest of this entry »

Manny’s poetry has lately taken a darker, more existential twist. A brief selection from the “Enough is Enough” collection:

Tired and Silent

I don’t want to talk to them
about contracts right now. So what?
I know they got me,
but enough
is enough.
I’m tired of them,
they’re tired of me.

Contents of a Letter…Or Whatever.

After 2008, just send me a letter
Or whatever.
You don’t even got to call my agent
Or whatever.
‘Hey, thank you for everything.
‘You’re going to
Become a free agent.
We’re not going to
Pick up your option in ‘09.’
I’m happy,
But enough is enough.
You know?
That’s it.

Trade Deadline Assessment

They’re not going to
Pull the trigger, because they
Know what they’ve got here.

2009

Don’t worry about
It. Enough is enough. In
Oh-Nine, I move on.

How Much is Enough? [They Know]

They know.
You got to ask Theo and John Henry.
They know.
I gotta go hit guys.

My Job is to Play Baseball

I don’t care where I
Play, I can even play in
Iraq if need be.

For Manny’s previous works, see here, here, and here.

Mark Teixeira’s been getting it from the Atlanta Press, and up here in Beantown Manny has been hearing it from all the usual suspects: the Boston Herald, the Boston Globe, our sports talk radio station, WEEI, and on our local sports cable station, NESN. (Now he’s even getting lectures from Seattle cops for jaywalking.)

First, he gabbed to the Herald’s Rob Bradford about his contract situation. That drew an acid response from HOF pitcher-turned-colorman Dennis Eckersley, on NESN, and a truly bizarre story from Bob Lobel on WEEI, that Manny’s three-pitch K against Mariano Rivera was perceived by the front office as some sort of attempt to show them up for fining him. (An FO FU? Sorry.) For those of you paying attention to the calendar, the fine came in June, the strikeout a week later, and the report by Lobel nearly two weeks after that—the day after Manny’s contract complaints appeared in the Herald. Hmmm, that’s not suspicious.

And of course, cantankerous Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy had to get his licks in a couple of times. (In the second article, Shaughnessy’s article refers to one “Ralph Nadar.” Hello, copyeditor?)

And Tony Massarotti, in the Herald, attempted to demonstrate that Manny’s antics, combined with his price tag, make him no longer worth it, because he’s supposedly in decline:

The Red Sox long ago chose to live with Ramirez’ bat and put up with his antics, mostly because he was worth it. But coming out of this year’s All-Star break, since the start of last season, Ramirez ranked 35th in the majors in RBI, trailing people like Jeff Francoeur, Adrian Gonzalez, Jose Guillen and Raul Ibanez. In home runs and slugging, Ramirez ranked a respective 44th and 35th.

Massarotti’s analysis goes beyond this—his column admits that it would be a huge challenge for the Sox to find anyone to replace Ramirez—but the above paragraph got picked up by WEEI on Monday morning, who rattled off the long list of those ahead of Manny in RBI over that timeframe. (For more on the trouble that the Sox would have replacing Manny, check out this column by Ken Rosenthal. Yes, Ramirez may be expendable—but Holliday and Teixeira are not the panaceas that Boston-based writers hope they are.)

The Worcester Telegram also picked up the charge, with Bill Ballou calling Ramirez “obnoxious” and suggesting that the Sox replace him with—get this—Brandon Moss. “That’s a smart business move, for sure,” wrote Ballou. Apparently, what Moss brings to the lineup at 400k is worth what Manny brings at 20MM, what with “the emergence of JD Drew as a production threat.”

Friends, this is where I start vomiting into my hands. This is where I break out into hives. This is where I break the glass, pull the red lever, and cry, “Stop the train! I’m getting off!”

I think it’s worth noting that these are all MSM folks. Not bloggers. The Red Sox blogosphere is remarkably quiet on the Manny front, in fact. Sure, there were a few angry callers to WEEI. But then, angry callers on WEEI is sort of like white on rice. So when Dan Shaughnessy writes about the “Hub of Hardball Hysteria,” as if the fans are the ones going nuts over Manny’s bad behavior, I wonder just who the “hysterical” ones are. Sure, there was the poll on Boston.com suggesting that readers are divided 50/50 about whether Manny should stay or go. Sure, there were some disparaging comments made on message boards—but there seemed to be even more defending Ramirez. So it looks to me like this is mostly a media gripe session and not actually the fan-firestorm it has been made out to be.

Nonetheless. I cannot stand idly by while JD Drew’s “emergence” is bandied about like some sort of real solution. I cannot sit here and let the blunt and contextless RBI statistic be the tool with which Manuel Aristides Olnecida Ramirez is bludgeoned in the press. In good conscience, I cannot allow Brandon Moss to be posited as some sort of “replacement” for the future Hall of Famer.

In short, I simply could not stand to look at myself in the mirror if I did not write today’s Metro column.

First of all, dear UmpBump readers, an apology is in order. We had a very heated exchange today with our hosting provider due to their decision to pull down the site.

As a result, we had to strip most of our sidebar links and other things (ie, like having two posts on the home page). Like my mom says, you gotta look at the positives, so we’ll be redesigning the site to increase efficiency and avoid database resource “over-use” (btw, any WordPress theme designers out there that want to contribute, let us know).

And now, as an apology for the downtime I present to you all this special video I came across today, featuring the beautiful HBW alumna Juliana Ramirez and a new HBW inductee, Leslie Holliday, wife of All-Star Slugger Matt Holliday, appearing in a beauty-at-the-ballpark special on the Today Show.

Très, très belles.

Yogi Berra lip balm, though? Talk about odd…

Nick: Wow, shoving front office types to the ground appears to be becoming quite popular!

Paul: wasn’t george costanza the yankees’ traveling secretary? or was he the assistant to the traveling secretary?

Coley: I’m pretty sure he was the assistant to the traveling secretary. Though this latest Manny being Manny incident does seem like it was ripped from a Seinfeld episode.

Sarah: Manny certainly has a much hotter temper this year.

Paul: is it wrong for me to say that i hope he and shields go alien vs. predator on each other tonight?

Coley: if hoping that Manny and Shields come to blows is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.

Sarah: It’s times like this when I really do miss having Pedro and Trot Nixon on the team.

Paul: well, the mets currently have both. and i kind of wish we didn’t.

Sarah: Oh, yeah. That’s weird. Well, they make a great duo. Pedro will throw at some guy’s head, the guy will charge the mound, and Nixon will sprint all the way in from right field, get there before anyone else does (seriously, he DOES have wheels, but only in fights), and flatten the enraged batter with one punch. Ahhhh, those were the days.