Manny being Manny

Often Manny Ramirez plays baseball with a child-like joy. Unfortunately, like clockwork, he also uses his position and the perception of himself as one of the games premier hitters to throw petulant tantrums.

Almost every year that he's been in Boston, he's done this - and the Fenway faithful have generally forgiven him, given him a pass, and cheered him. The same fan-base that booed Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, and Jim Rice, has given Manny a pass.

Now Manny says the following -

“The Red Sox don’t deserve a player like me,” Ramirez said. “During my years here, I’ve seen how they (the Red Sox) have mistreated other great players when they didn’t want them to try to turn the fans against them.

“The Red Sox did the same with guys like Nomar Garciaparra and Pedro Martinez, and now they do the same with me. Their goal is to paint me as the bad guy.

“I love Boston fans, but the Red Sox don’t deserve me. I’m not talking about money. Mental peace has no price, and I don’t have peace here.”

I agree, the Sox don't deserve him. They made Manny one of the highest paid players in the history of the game when they signed him - and they got a player that whined about not wanting to be in Boston from year one, a player that would fake injuries and illness to get out of the line-up, take plays off, and fail to run out ground balls, and in so doing, screw his teammates. Why? Because he doesn't like his contract. Because he doesn't have enough privacy in Boston (then don't invite the Globe into your house to do an article on where you live). Because he has friends on another team.

And let's face a few realities here - realities that Manny is not acknowledging...

Manny shoved a senior citizen to the ground, no one made him do that. Manny complained about pain in the knee - not for the first time while he's been with the team - and this time the Sox called him on it by getting an MRI on both knees. He's complained about his deal with regularity - the one he signed - upset about the team-held options. It's not like these were hidden in fine print when he signed the contract - everyone knew the deal before the ink was drying, but now he's unhappy with it. No one held a gun to his head.

Manny's doing a really, really good job of painting himself as the bad guy.

And let's face it, when someone's hitting 45 home-runs and knocking in 130 to 144 RBI's per season, and leading the league in many of the offensive categories, it's easy to write off the whining and other issues that come with Manny.

But he's not leading the league anymore. This is what he's doing...

Tied for 26th in the majors in home runs.

Tied for 25th in RBI's.

Tied for 25th in Runs.

Is 35th in batting average.

Is 18th in OPS.

Is 26th in slugging percentage.

Of all of those stats, the only one in which Manny leads the Red Sox is homers - he has 20 to JD Drew's 19, and Kevin Youkilis' 18. Otherwise, he trails teammates in every other category.

If the trade the Sox are looking at works out, Boston will bring in the 29-year old Jason Bay who leads Ramirez in home runs, has only four fewer RBI's, has scored six more runs while batting in the 12th ranked line-up in the majors. Ramirez is in the fifth, and for much of the season the Sox line-up was top two.

Over the last three seasons (including this one), Ramirez has hit 75 home runs and driven in 258, while Bay has 78 homers and driven in 257 in the Pirates line-up. Bay has not had hitters like David Ortiz, Mike Lowell and Kevin Youkilis around him.

For the season, given their current line-ups, Ramirez projects for 30 home runs and 102 RBI's, Bay for 33 homers and 96 RBI's. What might Bay do in a better line-up?

Hope Springs eternal

Spring.

It's a time of renewal, a time for new hope. It's when fans of the Cubs and Indians say things like, "this is the year. This year the [insert team name here] are gonna win it all."

On the surface, it might seem a little ridiculous. There are twelve franchises in Major League Baseball that haven't won a World Series for at least 25 years (some of the teams haven't won since their inception as long ago as 1961...the Texas Rangers/Washington Senators). For Cleveland it's been 60 years and this will mark 100 for the Cubs. As the saying goes...when the sun comes up every morning, you come to rely on the fact that it will rise the next morning.

The Cubs perennially seem to find a way to blow their championship opportunities. The Indians haven't exactly fared much better.

Why should these teams, the fans of these teams hold out hope? Fans of the Cubs, Indians, Giants, Rangers, Astros, Brewers, Nationals, Padres, Mariners, Pirates, Phillies, and Orioles will all have differing levels of hope based on personnel, management, and ownership of their respective teams.

The fans of the Cubs and Indians hope to be this season's 2004 Red Sox, breaking a Championship drought that spans generations. Fans of the Orioles hope for a chance, in spite of the past incompetencies of Peter Angelos' ownership.

Why do they continue to hope, in spite of years of heartbreak?

Why, when there are teams that, on paper, that are better? Teams like the Red Sox, Mets, and Tigers.

It's simple really...

It comes down to two things. One is faith.

I've talked before about the religion of sport and the teams being the different denominations. It's no more evident than at the beginning of a season when, in spite of all proof to the contrary, we believe that the team we root for will be the one standing at the end of the season...whether on the diamond, the court, the gridiron, or the rink.

But the second is a little more tangible.

We watch the Red Sox break an 86-year drought to win two World Series titles in four seasons. We watch a Colorado Rockies team that wasn't even supposed to be a contender sweep its way into the 2007 Series. We see a Cardinals team that barely played over .500 ball during the regular season in 2006 win that year's championship.

We see these things and think about our teams, "why not us? Why not this season?" And we believe.

Ultimately, we believe because we're fans.

Go Sox.

Scraping the bottom

Sometimes in professional sports, scraping bottom isn't about finishing last. Sometimes its about the fact that the franchise is run into the ground for so long that employees feel like they go to work in a cave somewhere far below the level of the rest of the respective league - bad drafting, bad coaching, bad free agent signings, bad executive decisions (budget, contracts, etc.).

Some teams are so bad in a given season that they become a benchmark against which other teams are measured - the 1962 New York Mets won only 40 games; in the team's first season the Buccaneers lost all 14 regular season games, becoming the first NFL team to do so in the Super Bowl era; the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers won nine while losing 73.

Sometimes, as I said, it's less about the single season then it is about sustained periods of putrescence. Some teams just historically have issues - the Cubs, Browns, and Clippers have been the sad sacks of their respective leagues for years.

But who are the teams scraping bottom now?

Let's start with the worst of the worst -

The New York Knicks - The Isiah Years. Not including the partial season of 2003 - 2004 that Isiah Thomas has presided over this team as team president/GM and/or coach, and not including this season's sterling start, Isiah Thomas has managed to pad his resume with the following facts -

• The team has an aggregate record of 89 -157. Currently the team is on pace for roughly a 25 win season.
• Thomas himself has been embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal, found guilty by a jury of his peers.
• He has put together a team of individuals with the highest payroll in the league, but has never been able to get the team to .500.
• He has publicly feuded with his team's biggest star, Stephon Marbury, who claims he has the goods on Thomas and also admitted to sleeping with a team intern.
• Owner James Dolan has publicly supported Thomas, going as far as to say that he believed that Thomas was doing a good job and had the team headed in the right direction.

Sure, there are other teams that have finished below the Knicks in the standings (last year's Celtics for one), but none have had the combination of futility on the court, in front office, and in the court rooms as the Knicks have had.

The Knicks were, at one point, one the NBA's most storied franchises. Now they're the punchline.

A close second? The Matt Millen Detroit Lions - Like the Dolan owned Knicks, the ownership of the Lions is in serious denial about their general manager, Matt Millen. Millen has drafted poorly, made poor hirings of coaches, and has played the free-agent market like a neophyte stock broker on Wall Street. Like the Knicks, there have been teams that finished behind them, but no other team has been as consistently bad.

To wit, under Millen,

• Detroit had an assistant coach arrested for indecent exposure. Said coach faced no significant consequences from the team.
• The team has set a record for futility with six straight seasons of double digit losses, and are sitting at 6-6 this season after a four game losing streak (no general manager in NFL history has presided over any team with as many 10+ losses per season). With games remaining against Dallas, San Diego, Kansas City, and Green Bay, a seventh straight season isn't out of the question.
• Has gone through at least three head coaches.
• Repeatedly drafted wide receivers with a top ten pick when the team had glaring needs at other places like offensive and defensive line.

Number three is, of course, the Miami Dolphins - Since 1998, this might be a team with some of the worst personnel decisions in the NFL. Consider that starters tend to hit their stride in their third or fourth year - particularly the later round picks.

And the result of their drafting futility?

• In the six drafts from 1998 to 2003, Miami had 59 choices. It exercised 46 of those picks and used 13 other choices in trades to acquire veteran players. Only Ricky Williams, acquired in a draft day deal as one of those 13 other choices, is on the current Dolphins roster (with thanks to Peter King for these numbers).
• They weathered the Nick Saban experiment.
• And while the jury is out, picking a glorified and injured kick returner with their first rounder just goes against conventional wisdom from a personnel standpoint.

Amazing for a team that once was a perennial power in the AFC East.

Pittsburgh Pirates, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and the Baltimore Orioles - Sure, I'm grouping these three together because these three teams prove that it doesn't matter how big or small a team's budget is when ownership has no idea what it's doing. Continuing a recent history of futility, the Pirates and Devil Rays have become nothing more than glorified triple A teams cultivating talent for the rest of the league. The Orioles and George Steinbrenner wannabe, Peter Angelos has shown that a team can go out and spend money and still suck.

Were it not for the fact that the Marlins have established a pattern of binging and purging in order to win championships, they would make this list as well.