With the MLB All-Star Game followed by a six-game West Coast road trip for the Sawx, meaning no one stayed up to watch the games and only the Globe's last edition went to print early enough to have game stories, what else was the Boston sports world supposed to do this week but endlessly agonize about left fielder Manny Ramirez?
Manny (who actually refers to him colloquially as "Ramirez"?) is probably the greatest conundrum in current professional sports. He's a PG-13 version of Dennis Rodman, the former NBA star famous for his rebounding and infamous for his multicolored hair, tattoos, cross-dressing and sex life. Manny doesn't do any of these risque things; he's just impossibly perplexing, or, as Ben McGrath wrote in the New Yorker last year, in one of the most entertaining pieces ever, "attempts to locate him in time and space, as we shall see, inevitably miss the mark." (Seriously, reading that story is one of the best things you'll ever do.)
How can someone excel so breathlessly at one skill (and hitting a baseball is quite, quite hard) and be so aloof about everything else? How can one care so much about one thing (Manny's reported devotion to the batting cage and the craft of hitting is almost matchless) and be so irresponsible about the rest? How can one be so kind to teammates and indifferent to everyone else in his profession? How can someone be paid $20 million per year and be so uninterested in being the adult that such wealth is supposed to require? How can one shrug off the rest of the world?
Yes, Manny's had a deplorable summer: intermittent slumps at the plate, the indefensible pushing (assault?) of the team's 64-year-old traveling secretary, and now, a knee injury. And he doesn't deserve $20 million next year, considering he's on the downside of his career -- the controversy that sparked a week's worth of inane pontificating. But the barbs thrown his way on WEEI have been absurd, heading too far toward dismissing his career. "Dennis & Callahan," always the nadir of sports journalism, even went after him for his dreads, which don't appear to have been trimmed (controlled? washed?) in at least three years. Who cares about his hair? As an interesting side note, ESPN's tease for Sunday's game against the Yankees, featured a picture of Manny circa 2004, when he had a tightly wound 'fro. Can America not except someone with darker skin and long, knotty, ugly hair? (Though, to be fair, "Dennis & Callahan" also went after Sawx pitcher Clay Buchholz, who's white, for wearing too many necklaces? Huh? Homophobia?)
Really, Manny is the second-best hitter of my generation. Look at the numbers from 1995-2006 -- just awesome. The OPS is more than .900 each year! (I'll give A-Rod the gold medal, based on what his careers stats will be when he retires, but, boy, are Rodriguez's accomplishments deathly boring. If Manny weren't guaranteed a spot in the Hall of Fame, he would receive an honorary induction for, earlier this year, continuing to run to the fence after making a catch, leaping, high-fiving a fan in the front row [!] and then doubling the runner off first base. [!!] That will never be repeated.) I even think he's a decent left fielder in Fenway, where he knows how to play the wall -- and one hopes he would after eight years there -- and has a routinely accurate throw for something that looks more like a whimsical fling. And faced with the proposal of taking someone with his extraordinary hitting skills, or at least hitting skills circa 2005, or sub-ordinary fielding ones, I'd take the hitting ones any day.
Why do we nag our sports celebrities so, most especially here in Boston? What do we want from them? They play a game! When you have one extremely superb talent, shouldn't that be enough? Or is it exactly because of that that we want more?
Update: Manny went 3-for-5, with 2 RBI and 2 runs scored, last night, just a few hours after telling the press Sawx ownership is welcome to trade him if they think the team is better without him, and that he's tired of them and they're tired of him. And one of his two outs was a mammoth 419-foot fly ball to center! He's the most irresponsible professional -- needlessly and distractingly ragging management -- and also the most consummate one -- not letting any of the surrounding hubbub distracting him from doing a great job. Unsurprisingly, CHB was not amused and issued his second-straight column (umpteenth this summer?) urging the Sawx to dump Manny. They can trade him if they like, but there's no way the Sawx make the World Series, maybe even the playoffs, even they do. Manny just went indie.
No comments:
Post a Comment