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?

Tick-Tock

Tick-Tock one...

One last note about Roger Clemens, hopefully for a while.

According to an AP report that hit the wire on Monday night, a letter is being drafted by the lawyers that serve Henry Waxman's oversight committee referring the Rocket and his questionable testimony to the Justice Department. The AP reported that the story was originally reported on the New York Times Web site and cites three unidentified stories.

It also notes that Brian McNamee's lawyers are going to petition the courts for a dismissal of the defamation charges levied against him by Clemens' lawyers.

Unless George W. intervenes within the next eleven months, it appears Clemens has screwed the pooch.

The nanny testified that she was at the party at Jose Canseco's but Clemens was not (why would Clemens' family attend if he didn't, and evidence suggests she was coached), and now it appears there's photographic evidence of his attendance of said party. This doesn't even consider that the golf course receipt that provides his alibi is, by reports, adjacent to Canseco's property. And that's just the tip of the ice berg. There's still his completely unbelievable excuses for having someone who's not a medical professional inject him in his rear for things like Vitamin B, which can be injected anywhere, and lidocaine, which will have no effect on anything but the area injected (don't believe me? Then look it up).

Now the Rocket has to get used to something that doesn't exist in baseball. He's on the clock, and it is now only a matter of time before the clock hits zero.

Tick-Tock two...

I am a football/baseball guy.

We are in that stretch of time between seasons that I look for things to cover; football and baseball transactions, the Ironman, sports history...just the occasional basketball or hockey game. So I spend my sports-allotted coverage time counting down to the start of the baseball season, the draft, and mini-camps.

Tick-Tock three...

It was only a matter of time before this idea was tried.

If this were reported on April 1, I would swear this was an April Fools' joke. The Florida Marlins are holding auditions for their new cheerleading squad. The squad will be dubbed the Manatees.

The squad, which is expected to be comprised of dancing fat men, will perform at Friday and Saturday games during the season.

The combined weight of the squad is expected to meet or exceed the combined weight of the fans attending the Marlins games - and in occasional cases, the combined weights of the fans attending both Marlins and Devil Rays games.