Manny Ramirez: Sort of a dick

October 17th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

Normally, I love athlete celebrations of all shapes, sizes, and electronic persuasions. Not only do they not get me all bothered like 90 percent of the world’s analysts, I usually enjoy them. Sports are fun, they are entertainment, and such minor tauntings serve as handy little reminders of that fact.

Still: Manny Ramirez is sort of being a dick.

What is certain, however, is that those three blasts looked almost ridiculously inadequate against the magnitude of Cleveland’s lead. To make matters worse, Ramirez, after his breathtaking 451-foot tee shot over the center field fence, had one of his vain, oblivious Manny-being-Manny moments. With his team still losing by four and its season in jeopardy, Ramirez posed for several seconds at home plate with both arms over his head, just as he did in a now-well-known photograph of his walk-off homer in Game 2 of the Division Series against the Angels.

It doesn’t really matter to me that Manny was winning or losing — that was a huge home run, and deserved some sort of emotion — but it’s just that Manny took sooooo looooooong to get over himself. How has no one thrown at him yet? Not that I’m condoning that … it’s just that baseball players are usually the most sensitive nanny-boys on the planet, and they do not enjoy being shown up.

Then again, a conversation with my girlfriend last night raised a pretty good point:

Me: Man, what a shot. Manny is going to get his head taken off if he’s not careful.
Girlfriend, looking up from a magazine: Really? Why?
Me: Well, look at that. He’s just sort of standing there forever; that’s really not cool.
Girlfriend: Good for him. He hit a home run.
Me: Yeah, but the Indians are not gonna not like that.
Girlfriend: Well then they shouldn’t pitch him strikes!

Excellent point.