In last night’s game at Yankee Stadium, Manny Ramirez took a pitch on a full count. It was high but borderline. Home plate umpire Tim McClelland is sometimes slow to make his calls, and sometimes too soft-spoken when he does. On this pitch, he appeared to say nothing—or at least, nothing readily audible—so Manny began to walk towards first base. He’d gone about 10 feet when McClelland rang him up. And an incensed Manny snapped out of his habitual Buddha-like calm:

“What?!” shouted Manny, who could have been tossed if McClelland were more like, say, Phil Cuzzi. But though Manny’s gesticulations were fierce and his mutterings mutinous, the calm, quiet McClelland allowed him to stay in the game.

For the last few years, Manny Ramirez had been something of a recluse in Red Sox nation. He stopped doing commercials. He never spoke to the papers. He didn’t go on television. But late last season, Manny emerged from his hermetic seclusion like a prophet returned from the wilderness. Nowadays, as befitting his new meditating, The Secret-reading lifestyle, he’s got the dreadlocks of a Bob Marley and the ‘stache of a Kahlil Gibran. And this week he offered some wisdom in haiku/poetic form:

Focus

It’s not hard to play.

It’s easy. It depends on

What you focus on.

Home Run Ball (Right There)

I was looking

For a good pitch–

Something that I like.

It was right there.

Like a fastball–

It was something like eighty–

Or a change.

It was right there.

Even When You Do Not Come Back

Even when you do

Not come back, we love this job

We love to compete.

All the Way

We never give up,

Man.

We just play

Hard.

All the way.

162

David’s gonna hit.

That’s why this is a hundred

And sixty two-games.

Hitting for him

He’s fine. It’s only

Fourteen games. If he doesn’t

Hit, I’ll hit for him.

Good Things

There are things you aren’t

Gonna like, but you have to

Look at the good things.

What I’m Not

Don’t know, I’m not a

Pitching coach. You got to talk

To the pitching coach.

Contract Extension (To Work Out)

Why isn’t it going

To work out?

Of course it’s going

To work out.

Everybody knows it’s going

To work out.

A Player Like Me

I

changed everything.

Boston never had a player

Like me.

They had Mo Vaughn

In the ’90s

But after that,

Nothing

Like me.

I went there,

And my attitude

Changed everything.

Booed

I can’t control that.

I just like to come and play

The game and go home.

Nothing says “I want to stay here” and “I want to finish my career here” like going out and hiring Scott Boras as your agent, right?Oh Manny, you so crazy!

It wouldn’t be Spring Training without a few crazy quotes. But the past couple of days have really set a high bar for nuttiness.

First, there’s Manny Being Manny, patting himself on the back for showing up on time to camp for the first time in a while: “I might be late two years in a row, but I’m always on time.” I think he’s just joking. But he said it with a straight face. And with Manny, who knows?

Then there’s Ichiro Being Ichiro: “If the other corner outfielders have too much speed and too much ability and try to do too much, it’s hard for me.” Fortunately, since Ichiro will be flanked by Raul Ibanez and Brad Wilkerson, that shouldn’t be a problem.

But what could be better than Sheff Being Sheff? Yes, Gary Sheffield, always good for a few words, is back and at it again. Discussing his ongoing dispute with his former agent, Scott Boras, he described his experience with the Uber-Agent thus: “Total hell. I shouldn’t have ever introduced myself to him. Period. Bad person.” Sheffield also vowed that no one would be able to stop him from saying more “ugly things” once the case is resolved: “No fine is going to be big enough. No suspension is going to be long enough.” No one puts Sheffy in the corner!

Today is Valentine’s Day, a day for loving the ones you already love, but also for loving the ones you hope to love even more in the near future. So it’s fitting that this year, Valentine’s Day is also the day that pitchers and catchers report, bringing an end to the deadest two weeks in American professional sports, and signaling that spring is finally here.

Because spring training is baseball’s time of love. There is plenty of love to go around for both the veterans you already love, and the young prospects you hope to love very soon. It is a time when every aging veteran has just come back from a new conditioning program and looks better than he has in years. Every rookie seems to have a bit of pop in his bat or a fastball with some good late movement. Everyone seems to have an shot to make the team, and every team seems to have a shot to make big things happen.

What is Spring Training?

Spring Training is Ryan Dempster guaranteeing that the Cubs will win the World Series this year.

It is 2-time AL MVP Juan Gonzalez showing up in the Cardinals camp as a non-roster invitee, two years removed from his last pro season, in which he managed to get only one at-bat.

It is Manny Ramirez embarking on a grueling new workout regimen, promising to be on time to spring training, and boldly declaring that he wants to “be like Julio Franco and play until I’m 48.”

It fans dreaming just how good Clay Buchholz or Joba Chamberlain might be this year.

Spring Training is teams like the White Sox and Astros actually thinking they have any chance of contending. And really, who’s to tell them that they don’t?

Now I know somewhere in the back of my mind that not quite everything is perfect in Baseball Land, and that there was some pretty nasty business going down on Capitol Hill yesterday. And I’ll admit that I myself was riveted to the screen watching it.

But that was before. That was what we clung to for some semblance of entertainment during the dark and dying days of winter.

Today pitchers and catchers have reported, and I am already forgetting. Now there is only the crack of bats, the smack of leather on leather, blue skies, and the smell of fresh green grass. It is officially springtime, baseball is back, and anything seems possible.

How can you tell spring is in the air? Forget Punxsutawney Phil. I know the sap is rising when Manny starts being Manny again.

Training in Tempe, Arizona this offseason, Manny Ramirez is conveniently located for this weekend’s Super Bowl in Glendale. But he’s not going to just take the day off, no sir. According to WZLX in Boston, his agent is calling around town to the various Patriots bars in the area, asking them if they’d like to have the 2004 World Series MVP drop by during the game.

For $10,000.*

Now, you may be asking yourself, why would a man who makes twenty million dollars a year scrounge around under the seat cushions for that kind of chump change? Why would Manny Ramirez, who, we’ve been told, is shy, want to spend Super Bowl Sunday with a bunch of drunk Pats fans when he could spend it with his Hot Baseball Wife and Cute Baseball Babies? And if he needed ten grand, why wouldn’t he just sell some more stuff on eBay? But these are foolish questions, baseball fans. As we should know by now, Manny is as Manny does.

I just hope that wherever he watches the Super Bowl, he doesn’t see his shadow. I’m not ready for six more weeks of winter.

* Note of comparison: Maybe Manny should ask for more money. After all, Paris Hilton, Mariah Carey, and Britney Spears command appearance fees well into the six figures. Even Kim Kardashian gets $75k for party appearances, and I still don’t know why she’s famous.

I was just over at MVN, where they note that Manny has been working hard this offseason to avoid a repeat of 2007, where he started slow and wound up hurt (it’s well worth reading for their take on his numbers). They quote Peter Gammons, who says Ramirez has become “a maniacal workout warrior in Tempe Arizona” at the Athletes’ Performance Institute.

Yet oddly enough, last year Manny supposedly showed up to Spring Training “in the best shape of his career” as well. Don’t be fooled—under that baggy, pajama-like uni, the man is rock-hard. So either he overtrained and ended up hurting himself (not likely) or he did his best and ended up hurt anyway (likelier, and more frightening). After all, the man is 35—remember when all sluggers used to start declining at 35, instead of growing second jawbones?—and the team needs to stop thinking of him as the 150-game guy he used to be and start thinking of him as the 130-game guy he’s been for the past two seasons. Why not rest him against the Rays and the Royals throughout the season? Then maybe he won’t need a month off near the end. Or let him DH every now and then and give Ortiz the night off (for the ol’ knee). With a little more caretaking from the Sox, Manny should be able to produce at a useful level for another 3-4 years, surely. And when you consider that he’s only going to make $2 million more than Andruw Jones next year, he starts to sound almost like a bargain.

I don’t think you’ll see Manny having a 2007-like year again this year. After all, it was only in 2006 that he hit 35 dingers (in 130 games) and compiled a .439 OBP. And the man positively caught fire during the 2007 postseason, coming back after month-long break and showing absolutely no signs of rust. His work ethic is famous and his eye is unerring. (If you ever see him take a called strike three, I guarantee you the ump botched the call. Guarantee it.) So I see no reason why, with a little care and feeding, he can’t continue to protect David Ortiz in the lineup for years to come.

I think Manny Ramirez wants to retire with the Red Sox. I know, it’s been a tumultuous, on-again-off-again love affair between Boston and Manny—the trade demands, the Manny Moments, that incident with the waivers—but Manuel has two World Series rings with this team now. He and Boston have finally made peace with one another. Plus, he’s just 10 homers shy of his 500th round-tripper. He’s got a lifetime average of .313, a lifetime OBP of .409, and a lifetime OPS of 1.002. To me, he’s an easy first-ballot Hall of Famer. If he retires with Boston, they’re sure to retire his number. Is he really going to walk away from that? And is Theo really going to let him? I don’t think so.

So when Manny made his famous it’s-not-the-end-of-the-world-if-we-lose comment, I defended him then and there. In fact, I even said “Who Cares?” would make a great 2007 postseason rallying cry and hoped for some entrepreneurial spirit to silk-screen it on some t-shirts.

And now that the Red Sox have come back from their 3-1 ALCS deficit and are headed to the World Series, the rest of the baseball writing world is agreeing with me. Now that the games have been played. Now it’s “safe.”

Among the perps? One of my favorite writers, Charles Pierce over at Slate. He posted an article today at noon, beginning:

All right, then, be it resolved: Manny Ramirez knows more about baseball than you do.

And be it further resolved: Manny Ramirez knows more about baseball than anyone else does.

Say it ain’t so, Charlie! Please tell me you wanted to write this column days ago, but your killjoy editor made you wait! Because what you write is true, but it would have been true even if the Red Sox had lost Game 7.

Also today, Eric Pfahler at Scripps Howard chimed in with the following paragraphs:

Manny Ramirez did the right thing — whether he knew it or not — by making his comments prior to Game 5 of the ALCS about how life will move on if the Red Sox don’t make the World Series. Everyone was bashing the Red Sox for playing tight, so Manny becomes Manny and says something silly all the while bashing the ball as if he’s playing with an aluminum bat.

Regardless of what people might think, it was exactly what the Red Sox needed. The team needed to loosen up and it showed in Game 5. No one is better at creating a fun distraction than Ramirez. We in the media are the silly ones who lap it up.

Lap for yourself, Eric!

Now, not everyone recapping Game 7 today mentioned Manny’s comments. But almost everyone talked about the team “staying loose.” And of course, no one was looser than one Manuel Aristides Ramirez. That was true several days ago. Without the benefit of hindsight. When it wasn’t “safe” to say it.

For the record, I just have to say, it is unjust to lambaste Manny for a) that weirdo 390 foot single in Game 5 or for b) not sliding into home plate in the same game.

First, I flew into a rage Friday morning en route to work when I was listening to Boston’s sports radio station, WEEI, and the announcers not only criticized Manny, saying they “hadn’t even noticed it until a Tom Verducci article” that mentioned the non-slide. Then they also slammed a caller who criticized Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. It is hard to overstate the robustness of the Boston radio team’s defense of Buck and McCarver. It was as if they were literally watering at the mouth over how “excellent” they supposedly are. “Excellent.” Yes. They actually used that word. They even said they learned from listening to them!

[Sputter, fume, seethe, sputter.]

But as I was saying:

1. Re: the homer that wasn’t, the eggheads at BP have already said they thought it was a home run. I, for one, accept Cleveland’s crazy-ass ground rules but I still think that any ball that hits “the top” of the wall is “over” the wall and hence ought to be called a “home run.” Nonetheless, I think it’s transparent that Manny wasn’t running hard on that ball because he thought it was caught, not because he assumed it was out. If he’d assumed it was out, he would have stood at the plate with his hands in the air. Yes, he should have made it to second on that play, but it was understandably confusing. If that happens to David Ortiz, I guarantee you nobody mentions it.

2. Re: the slide that wasn’t, what the heck was Manny supposed to do? Kill Victor Martinez to make him drop the ball? Slide the 3.7 miles to home plate? If there’s one person to be blamed for that play, it’s clearly Demarlo Hale, the Red Sox third base coach. Maybe Jacoby Ellsbury can score from second on a shallow liner to right, but Manny Ramirez can’t.

So, yeah. There you have it. The only people who think otherwise are the kind of people who actually learn from Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. Do you want to be that kind of person? Be honest. No, no you don’t.

At this point, this week’s Boston Metro column seems a bit like piling on–after all, what else is there to do on the off-day after three consecutive losses but rip the manager? But I promise you, gentle UmpBump readers, that when I wrote it at the crack of dawn Tuesday morning, I was a lone voice crying in the wilderness.

Now, however, there’s a new mini-scandal in the Boston papers this morning concerning (who else?) Manny Ramirez. Yes, he actually talked to reporters! And though he said he would trade his individual records for another World Series in a heartbeat, this is the phrase that raised eyebrows today:

“It doesn’t happen, so who cares? There’s always next year. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”

Asked about that comment this morning on WEEI, Boston’s sports talk station, Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino said the only thing that made sense: that such “calmness” is what makes Manny Ramirez such a great hitter (and, I might add, such a dangerous hitter with two strikes against him).

I’d like to go one step further with that comment, however. In 2003, Red Sox Nation turned an offhand comment by Kevin Millar into the postseason slogan, “Cowboy up.” In 2004, it was Curt Schilling’s rhetorical question, “Why not us?” Clearly, what was lacking from the 2005 playoffs was a catchphrase. Let’s not make that mistake again, Sox fans. I submit for your approval, the 2007 postseason mantra, courtesy Manny Ramirez:

“Who cares?”

It’s bold. It’s shocking. It’s completely counterintuitive. I like it.