Posted: 3:42 am
August 3, 2008
THE TRADE deadline came and went, and the inevitable naming of winners and losers followed. And here is who should be the biggest loser: Manny Ramirez.
He won't be, however. Those who should punish him won't.
Ramirez already has selfishly received what he wanted, which was to force his way out of Boston. That led to a deal to the Dodgers in which his two remaining option years were voided, allowing him to become a free agent after this season. Ramirez wanted to chase another $100 million-plus deal this offseason. That spurred the bad behavior that motivated the Red Sox to evict their cleanup hitter.
Manny is the best right-handed hitter I have seen, and in previous years I viewed the Manny being Manny stuff as mostly zany and benign. This year, though, he moved into a calculating, malicious area. As one person who watched up close said, "It wasn't weird anymore, it was strategic and mean spirited."
There should be a price paid for that. But only if certain institutions stand up to him, such as:
THE COMMISSIONER'S OFFICE
If protecting the integrity of the game really is Bud Selig's most important role, then how has he not hauled Ramirez to New York for, at least, a discussion? Multiple officials spoken to used the term "gray area" to describe why Selig could not suspend Ramirez for jeopardizing the competitive integrity of the game. But Selig should at least compel Ramirez to explain his behavior this season with the Red Sox; clarify what was going on in the gray area of his mind.
Boston officials came to believe Ramirez was protecting his stats by faking injury to avoid certain tough righties. For example, he begged out of two starts each against Joba Chamberlain and Seattle's Felix Hernandez. After not starting against Chamberlain on July 6, Ramirez was asked to pinch-hit with the winning run. In what was viewed by the Red Sox as protest, Ramirez never took the bat off his shoulder as Mariano Rivera whizzed three strikes by him. And there appeared to be a lot of on-field indifference when Ramirez did play.
If you are a cleanup hitter who does not play when healthy or does not play hard when you do play, don't you seriously tank your team's chance of winning? Wasn't this kind of the reason the baseball commissioner's job was created in the first place? The Red Sox certainly kept a file on Ramirez's bad acts going back to previous years when he dubiously sat out ends of seasons. This year, Boston sent him for an MRI exam that showed nothing wrong with the knees that Ramirez claimed were too achy to allow him to play.
Again, maybe there is too much "gray area" here for a penalty. But doesn't Selig have to demand a face-to-face to discourage other players from thinking they could follow the same lay-down-on-the-job script to gain free agency? Isn't it dangerous to baseball to have a player involved in a pennant race not trying?
