Friday, August 1, 2008

Addition by subtraction

In the spirit of my previous post regarding independence, I'm happy to say that Manny Ramirez is no longer with the Red Sox. Despite the fact that he's a certain hall-of-famer, he wasn't worth keeping in the clubhouse. He quit on his teammates. This man makes over $120,000 every game - and there are 162 games in a season! - yet he didn't feel that he needed to show up and perform every night to earn that money.

So the team did the only thing they could: they gave him away to L.A. Not only are the Sox paying the remainder of his salary for the last 2 months of this season ($7 million!), they also threw in a couple of players from their major league roster to make sure the deal got done. The Dodgers get a free Manny, the Pirates get 4 promising young players, and the Sox cure cancer - and get a good player in Jason Bay. Win win win.


Manny was quick to draw a parallel to his situation and the one Nomar Garciaparra was in 4 years ago, painting the picture that the team ran these stars out of Boston. Here's another parallel: In the summer of '04, the Sox traded away Nomar - like Manny a fan favorite, but like Manny a player that was an underperforming grouch - and promptly won their first world series in a bazillion years. Now Manny joins Nomar with the Dodgers, and the Sox turn the page.

See you in October.

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