Red Sox Rundown

Benedict Arnold and George Washington. Judas and Jesus. Manny Ramirez and Red Sox Nation. What do these three pairs have in common? Well, if you don’t know the answer to that, I suggest you come out from under the rock now. The weather’s fine.

Red Sox Nation was betrayed in every sense of the word by Manny Ramirez and his agent, Scott Boras, in 2008. The behavior of this pair has been reprehensible. Despicable. If I could think of any stronger adjectives, I’d use those too. Let’s clench our teeth and remind ourselves of what exactly went down before the trading deadline. After years of playing with the collective heart of Red Sox fans (He hates Boston. He loves Boston! Just kidding, he hates it again. He wants to spend the rest of his career in Beantown!), things finally boiled over. He injured his right knee. I mean his left knee. Nothing makes an injury more suspicious than when it mysteriously leaps from one limb to another. He may have purposely struck out on three pitches against Mariano and the Yankees late in a close game. He got into a fight with Kevin Youkilis, who isn’t the coolest cucumber in the clubhouse but seems to manage to get along fine with the other 23 guys on the roster. He shoved traveling secretary Jack McCormick to the ground. He essentially forced Theo Epstein & company to trade him, and it worked. Then, after learning he had been traded, Manny and Boras lobbied to stay in Boston and Boras promised his player would behave if the Sox would agree not to pick up the option year. It would have served Ramirez right to be “stuck” in Boston for the remainder of the year and have the extra year picked up as well, but that simply wasn’t an option for the front office. Management was disgusted with him. The fans were sick of him. Even his teammates, save for Julio Lugo and possibly David Ortiz, had had enough. He had to go.

So he lands in Los Angeles, where suddenly, he rediscovered his drive to run out ground balls, his knee ailment vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared, and he became the darling of the clubhouse. More than a few have speculated that all this was orchestrated by agent Scott Boras. That doesn’t excuse Ramirez, it just makes them both stupid. This whole thing reeks of a bad breakup. You’ve put up with a no-good boyfriend for years because of a few redeeming qualities. Finally, you have had enough, and you break up “mutually” when he makes it unmistakeably clear he does not love you and never has. So you watch him leave, smiling through your gritted teeth while hoping for his untimely demise. You find this new guy, Jason Bay, who is everything you need him to be and a little bit more, but you’re still spending your waking hours wondering what Boyfriend A is doing. His success infuriates you, but luckily for you, it’s short-lived and now you can parade around on the arm of Boyfriend B while Boyfriend A is collecting aluminum cans.

And so it is with Red Sox Nation. Nothing hurt more than watching The Manny Show in LA, but now the tables have turned. Spring training in Fort Myers has all the controversy of an episode of Leave it to Beaver, and Manny.. well, Manny is jobless. Manny’s agent made the statement Thursday that the Dodgers needed to choose between winning and losing, between Manny and no Manny. Every time Boras opens his mouth he makes a bigger fool of himself. It’s painfully obvious that he overplayed his hand. He claimed Manny had multiple other offers, then the Yankees, Mets, and Angels came to the Dodgers’ rescue and stated that these alleged other offers did not come from them. And there went most of the teams who have the cash to land Ramirez. After months of waiting, Boras has finally realized his mistake. So does he go crawling back to the Dodgers, probably the only team who, at this point, would take Ramirez if served to them on a platter? Of course not. That would make too much sense.  No, he pathetically tries to paint the Dodgers as the desperate ones, the ones who will be lost without Manny’s services. It’s clear the Dodgers were a better team with Manny than without him, but are they really the desperate ones? No, Boras overplayed his hand and is paying the price. He’s not going to get his four-year deal. He’s not going to get his $100 million. What he’s going to get is humiliated if he doesn’t stop this charade.

All the while, Ramirez seems to be drinking the Boras Kool-Aid, believing the agent has his best interests at heart. Scott Boras looks out solely for Scott Boras, but ironically, he’s hurting no one more than himself. As much as I hate A-Rod, I give him much credit for crawling back to the Yankees last offseason and basically affirming that the teams making even A-Rod’s other offers were off somewhere having tea with the tooth fairy. If Manny wakes up enough to follow suit, he’ll be much better off. Boras, on the other hand, is causing irreparable damage to his reputation, and therefore, his career. It was widely reported before the Ramirez fiasco that Boras and the Red Sox brass enjoyed a good relationship. Compare that to this offseason, where in addition to the Manny debacle, Boras again screwed the Red Sox over in the Mark Teixeira negotations, and the Red Sox announced they were no longer interested in doing business with Scott Boras unless they could be sure it was on the level. The disenchantment spreads far beyond Boston: Why do you think Yankees, Mets, et. al. were so willing to pipe up and let the Dodgers know that Ramirez’s other offers weren’t coming from them? They, too, are all too familiar with Boras’s tactics and are growing tired of them.

For as much as I dislike Manny Ramirez, Scott Boras is in an entirely different category. He fancies himself an expert in psychology, and a master of deception. Though he succeeded temporarily, he has now lost the trust of many teams and players as well. Boras deserves to be shamed by the media and shunned by the MLB, and if this situation carries on much longer, he may get get exactly what he is entitled to.