Manny-san

There are certainly downsides to this trip to Japan: the fact that it carries over into the regular season, that the games are hell to listen to, and the fact that you feel like you're living in some sort of alternate universe where you need to use complex fractions just to figure out a game's start time. Or maybe that's just me. Either way, despite the drawbacks to this trip, it's a blast to see the Sox heralded like conquering heroes from across the sea, and it's nice to see them engaged in a friendly contest, an exchange, it seems, between nations and cultures. Add to all the warm fuzzies an article by Amalie Benjamin revealing that Manny wants to finish his career in Boston and hit 7,000,000 home runs (or 700, I could be wrong), and it makes for a good read.

Manny's a funny guy. Not funny in the "ha ha, Manny just went into the scoreboard" kind of way, but funny in the way the fans perceive him. I've given my share of crap to a lot of players over my long 25 years, but I can't recall very many instances of giving it to Señor Ramírez. No, it's the Coco Crisps of the world that drive me to obscenity; all those I-like-to-talk-a-big-game-bug-swing-at-anything-thrown kind of players make me climb the walls. They don't (as Theo put it in the above article "understand it", the "it" being hitting, of course. They don't get their role on the team, they don't understand hitting as a philosophy. They don't learn from at-bat to at-bat, but rather go up their hacking, the embodiment of a single solitary link ignorant of the rest of the chain that surrounds it.

It's true that Manny's defense can be frequently below average and occasionally atrocious, that his effort in the field has him jogging after balls instead of sprinting. His time with the media in the last few seasons has been countable on one hand, and he's provided more conflicting copy than just about anybody currently on the team. What isn't true is that he's cheated the fans. When he stands and the box and strikes out, there's a knowledge that he's walking away from the plate having learned something, even if it's a small sort of something, that is going to help him the next time. When guys are all turned around, having confused their big fly swing with their Texas leaguer swing and have killed the thought of The Other Way swing, Manny has shown us how effective that little flick to the right can be, or how a clutch walk can turn the tide of an inning.

He's a goofy guy, no two ways about it, but I love Manny Ramirez. When he stops producing it will be absolutely tragic, and it will be sadder still when he inevitably leaves the Hub. But for all the haters of the world who jump on the Walter Reed bandwagon and scream bloody murder from the rooftops, I say, Leave the guy alone.