The circus has left town.
The incredible eight year Red Sox career of Manny Ramirez, one that often seemed more suited to fiction, ended yesterday afternoon when the Sox traded him to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ended an era when ``Manny Being Manny'' became the new catch-all phrase to explain the explainable, the curious world that existed between the ears of one Manuel Aristides Ramirez.
Because no one could have made up the saga of Manny in Boston.
And no one in the long history that's been baseball in Boston was there anyone as remotely bizarre as Manny.
From walking inside the ``Green Monster'' to go to the bathroom during the middle of a game, to his signature dreadlocks, to his occasional reluctance to run out ground balls, to his prodigious power at the plate, to his undeniable star power, there was only one Manny.
Remember the time in Yankee Stadium he caught a fly ball and threw it in the crowd, thinking it was the third out when was only the second?
Remember when he came down to Pawtucket on a rehab assignment in 2002 and liked it so much he wanted to stay there?
Remember back in the middle of the May when he went into the crowd in Baltimore after making a catch, high-fived a fan, and then threw a runner out?
Or how about Wednesday night when he sat in the Red Sox dugout holding up a sign that said. ``I'm going to Green Bay for Brett Favre straight up.''
Could anyone make that up?
Not really.
But that was Manny, who alternated between being a cartoon character and one of the greatest right-handed hitters in modern baseball history, sometimes in the same at-bat.
He wasn't Ted Williams, and he wasn't Yaz, but he was one of the most talented players in Red Sox history, someone whose legend around here will outlive him.
At one level, he was the American Dream in cleats, the kid from the Dominican Republic who came to New York City when he was a teenager and used his innate ability to hit a baseball into an incredible success story. And by all accounts he worked tirelessly at his hitting, putting in hours, studying it, as if he were some kind of savant with a bat in his hands. By the time he came to Boston in 2001 for the astounding salary of 20 million a year he already was one of the best hitters in the game.
That was the Manny who always put up big numbers with the Red Sox, the Manny who was the MVP of the 2004 World Series, the Manny who became a cult hero in Fenway Park. That was the Manny who hit his 500th home run in May in Baltimore, only the 24th player in baseball history to do that, the Manny who is the all-time post season leader in home runs.
That was the Manny who hit home runs with flair, often standing in the batter's box in admiration, like an artist looking lovingly at his canvas.
But that was only one part of the story.
From the beginning there always were the rumors of Ramirez's idiosyncracies. They had arrived here with him from Cleveland, right there with his bats and gloves, the sense that Manny came with baggage. They rumors only grew. How he seemed to live in his own reality. How he was essentially was inaccessible to the media. How he was like some baseball man-child, someone out of the ordinary, even in the sometimes bizarre world of baseball.
On the surface, all this made him even more popular, more of a star, his behavior treated as if he were some eccentric relative.
Manny Being Manny.
But with Red Sox management it was always more complicated, as if the new ownership group long ago had tired ``Manny being Manny,'' long ago had tired of the constant sideshow that came with Ramirez.
There was the time they put him on waivers in the off-season, a symbolic gesture that said they were more than willing to get rid of him. There were the times he publicly said he wanted to be traded, like the one in 2003 when he said he wanted to go to the Yankees.
In retrospect, the Maginot Line might have been crossed at the end of the 2006 season when Manny, complaining of a sore knee, didn't pay the last 28 games of the season, even so many people around the team believed he simply didn't want to play anymore.
This season had been more of the same.
There was an incident in the Sox dugout when he shoved teammate Kevin Youkilis during a game. Then there was the infamous shoving of a 64 year old Red Sox traveling secretary Jack McCormick, when Manny didn't get didn't the number of tickers he wanted.
Then two weeks ago he got in a public dispute with Sox owner John Henry over potential upcoming contract negotiations.
Last weekend he said, ``they're tired of me, and I'm tired of them,'' and after that it was no secret the Red Sox had had enough. The act had grown tired, and now that he's 36 and approaching the twilight of his career the baggage had simply become too heavy.
And now he's gone, the incredible saga of Manny Ramirez off to L.A.
For ``Manny Being Manny'' will no doubt continue.
It just won't be in Boston anymore.
The circus has left town.
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Bill Reynolds is an incredible writer!!
As for Manny, good riddance to bad rubbish.
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Bill Reynolds is an incredible writer!!
As for Manny, good riddance to bad rubbish.
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It really never was "Manny being Manny". It really was "Manny for Manny".
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