Manny Ramirez

During yesterday's painful Sox loss, Tim McCarver, when he wasn't busy mispronouncing Massachusetts place names and just being Tim McCarver, kept blathering on and on about how Sox fans felt about stuff, as if he actually talks to Sox fans.

Today, Dan Shaughnessy does the same shtick, writing that:

Red Sox Nation is beaming over the news of Manny getting slapped for 50 games for using a banned substance.

Really, Dan? Yes, many people are relieved Manny's no longer on the Sox, but beaming? Is there anybody out there actually happy that Ramirez is now an all-but-convicted steroid user?

Aside from Shank, that is, who once again has somebody to heap hate on now that Curt Schilling is retired?

Chad Finn explains why, even if Manny were on the juice in 2004 and 2007 - and there's no evidence yet he was - the Sox victories those years were no worse than any other team's titles over the previous ten years (especially the 1999 and 2000 Yankees).

Schilling says stop worshiping ball players, just accept the fact that tons of players (but not him, he hastens to add) juiced up, and don't you dare suggest 2004 is now "tainted:"

... Relish in the Halladays, Rolens, Sabathias, Lowells, Counsells, Variteks, Garnetts, Jameses, Bruschis, Vrabels, the Jason Bays of the world. Relish in men of supreme character and tireless work ethic who respect the game and their teammates and suit up every day to leave it all on the field. If 100 more names come out I can still give you my word there are a lot more great men and phenomenal people in the game than not ...

Then go home and raise your own damn kids with your own set of values, integrity and morals. Be accountable to them and responsible for them and stop blaming video games or the 25-year-old kid from the Dominican who can hit a baseball 455 feet but you don't know and never will, for the "problems of today's youth". It starts and ends under your own roof. Your kids idolize the people you allow them to, and believe things you don't refute or discuss, and that's no one's fault but your own.
...

Meanwhile, Comcast SportsNet interviews Jonathan Papelbon about Mannygate.

... I don't know who that guy is. He quit on me, he quit on our team ...

This is the deal, regardless of what you take and regardless what you put in your body, every year at Spring Training they give us a long list in Spanish and in English of what you can do and what you can't do. There are no excuses.

Cameron Martin tells the Sports Guy what he can do with his maudlin back-from-the-future piece about how he has to explain to his kid that everybody on the 2004 Sox juiced up:

Grow a pair, Greenwich boy, and stop acting like a dumb, naive homer.

Dan Kennedy, meanwhile, tries to pinpoint exactly when Manny started shooting steroids taking fertility treatments. He narrows it down to the end of the 2007 season, not sure of the month and day yet.

Manny being A-Rod? Manny Ramirez will be suspended 50 games for positive drug test, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The Herald posts some excerpts from a Jonathan Papelbon interview with Esquire, including one in which he called MbM a "cancer."

Red is especially enamored of the Bot's claims he wouldn't be afraid to lay down some smack even on David Ortiz if need be.

Michael DiMella wonders if Scott Boras is in charge of selling off the dreaded one's condo at the Ritz, because it just went on sale for $1.6 million more than it did the last time Manny tried offloading it:

... No takers the first time...ok, let's just bump the price 23%! Hmmm.....Sounds an awful lot like Scott Boras is now advising Manny on real estate deals as well. If at first you don't get the offer you want, just raise your price! ...

Worcester offers contract to Manny Ramirez:

Worcester, MA January 27, 2009 -- The Worcester Tornadoes Professional Baseball Team has offered a contract to free agent outfielder Manny Ramirez for two years worth $24,000. The deal would pay the 12-time Major League Baseball All-Star approximately $3,000 during each month of the Can-Am Baseball Season. Unlike Major League Baseball, the Can-Am League operates with a salary cap, and the deal for Ramirez would be on par with other veterans in the league.

Via Daily Worcesteria.

Sure, he wasn't perfect, but let's not forget what he achieved while he was here, Denton says, wagging his finger at all the new Manny haters out there:

Last time I checked, Manny Ramirez hadn't killed anyone. He wasn't named in the Mitchell Report for pumping his body full of steroids. He didn't cheat on his taxes or his wife. He never even rolled his vehicle over on the way home from the strip joint. So how did he become the most hated player in baseball? ...

In which Big Schill calls out Manny Ramirez. It's gone from 38 Pitches, but the thing about RSS is that nothing's ever really deleted, so Pink Hat Hell reposts the whole thing and adds in commentary on what Schilling can do with his undead post.

You'd think a former sportscaster who sued a cartoonist (successfully) for calling him a drunk might think twice before accusing a professional baseball player of throwing games. You'd think wrong.

Via Rich Levine, who argues that Lobel must be stopped, and not just because the column shows he has problems stringing sentences together coherently.

Earlier:
Lobel isn't even being original at this point.

Red Sock blows the lid of the doddering announcer's latest Ramirez ranting:

... But what of the specific claim that Manny forgot which knee was bothering him? It might be worthy of a chuckle if it did not come after more than 10 years of insults and unwarranted nastiness from both the Boston and national media.

Yesterday I tried to find out where it had originated from.

It turns out that McCarver was repeating that exact same story more than two years ago! ...

Rob refutes Bill Simmons on the issue of Manny Ramirez:

... Just to put a few facts out there: Manny Ramirez is a grown man. He's a goofy bastard, but he's no child. He hired Scott Boras, not the other way around. And as much influence as Boras may have wielded, it was still Manny who gave the green light in the end. It was still Manny who took three strikes in Yankee Stadium. It was still Manny who shoved a Red Sox employee to the ground, slapped Kevin Youkilis in public, demanded a trade, and faked injury in the middle of a pennant race. ...

He adds:

... The most irritating part of Simmons' rant is that he tries to come off as the voice of all Sox fans. He thinks himself Tribunus Plebis (tribune of the people) of Red Sox Nation. But it's difficult to have the pulse of a New England fanbase from Los Angeles. ...

From [url=http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2008/10/01/ram237rezs_remarks_are_sad]today's CHB column on Manny Ramirez[/url]:

"Trust me when I tell you that Sox wins and losses have zero bearing on my happiness."

And he started hating you the day he came to Boston.

Alas, as Joel Brown discovers, ABC's "Supermanny" show for this fall has nothing to do with our favorite ex-Manny.

If Barry Manilow had written a song about Ramirez.

Tip: If you're glad to see him go, turn the sound up. If you miss him, turn the sound off and just watch the slide show.

Via Jay Fitzgerald.

Stephanie Rogers shows an interesting ESPN marketing campaign in LA last week, involving a new player on the Dodgers.

Red Sock cannot believe the yahoos holding up WEEI-published signs reading "Manny Who?" at yesterday's game:

... Shame on everyone who not only took one of the signs, but was enough of an idiot to actually hold it up during the game. As I have said before (after Keith Foulke was booed in 2005, if I recall), I would love to have the power to erase the memories of these "fans" of everything Red Sox-related after Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS, because they do not deserve to remember and forever savour what came afterwards.

Meanwhile, Beth tries to sum up all those years with Manny:

... It was while watching Papelbon that it suddenly felt to me like I was getting acquainted with this team all over again. I might not be glad Manny's bat is gone, but I was, at that point, very glad that the Subject of Manny was gone. The team looked like it had collectively exhaled for the first time in a week. ...

Kristen longs for another trade:

... Now, what can we do about trading Ken Macha to Kansas City? Look, I'm sure Macha's a nice guy, but he is Ambien in a suit. ...

From sad to glad, Boston bloggers have opinions about the Manny deal: Read more

Jason Bay, as Manny goes to Dodgers in three-team deal that doesn't involve the Marlins, Sports Illustrated reports.

The Globe reports Brandon Moss and Craig Hansen head to Pittsburgh as part of the deal.

Will Carroll on Basebal Prospectus reports we may have just seen Manny's last at-bat in a Boston uniform: He goes to the Marlins, Boston gets Jason Bay and John Grabow from the Pirates, the Pirates get somebody from the Marlins, two minor-leaguers from Florida and one from Boston.

Pink Hat Hell considers how Sox management always tries to destroy big-name players right before they get rid of them:

... By the time Derek Lowe was gone, you'd have thought the guy needed an elephant-sized dose of Lithium just to get out of bed in the morning. ...

Redsock explains how Jim Rice is a hypocrite, although one could argue he's only applying that old adage, "it takes one to know one," since he also shoved some guy a lot older than him.

Paul McMorrow gets an earful from a Bangladeshi cabbie who drove him home from last night's Meltdownsuzaka:

... These guys forget where they came from. I'm from a place like that. Dollars, man - that's a lot of money in some places. If I were him, if I could hit like that, I wouldn't playing around for $20 million. All I'd need is $1 million over two years. Why do you need more than that? ...

Meanwhile, Adam Hart suggests Manny-hating Peter Gammons should wipe the spittle off his face and stop claiming Ramirez takes himself out of the lineup against hard throwers, by researching each of Manny's off days.