prayers for blowouts

Manny being himself

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Sports radio is all abuzz this morning over Manny Ramirez’s comments yesterday regarding the must-win situation that the Red Sox have found themselves in. Here’s the quote from Manny, on the prospect of the Red Sox losing tonight and being done for the season:

“It doesn’t happen, so who cares? There’s always next year. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”

As a sports fan in general, and a Red Sox fan specifically, let me break down his 3-part quote.

“It doesn’t happen, so who cares?” - I care Manny. So do the folks who have given a lot of time, money, and energy into following the team. To me, this was the only stupid thing he said. The rest was just careless. (And yes, I would care A LOT more if we hadn’t won in 2004.)

“There’s always next year” - Hey, you don’t have to tell that to Red Sox fans. That was our life mantra for most of this century.

“It’s not like it’s the end of the world” - Can’t argue with this, unless Jesus splits the eastern sky on a white horse following a 1-2-3 Joe Borowski ninth inning. Then, maybe I’d have qualms with it.

Bottom Line: Everyone knows that losing a playoff series is not the end of the world, but no one wants to be told that by their team’s clean-up hitter on the eve of the biggest game of the year.

Will Manny get a pass on this one? Yeah, i think so. He always does for two reasons. 1) He can rake with the best of them and 2) He’s a likable guy. You might think the former is the most important part of the equation, but i would argue it’s the latter.

It’s the same reason that T.O. gets so much bad press while Chad Johnson gets a pass for all of his goofy antics. Both are gifted wide receivers that love to make themselves the center of attention, but for every time T.O. comes across as a good guy, there’s an incident where he comes across as a jerk. Same could be said of Randy Moss coming into this season. Chad Johnson, on the other hand, always seems to be having fun, and we like that. We like people who don’t rock the boat and don’t make us uncomfortable.

[reality tv interjection]Same thing happened last night on Survivor when the losing tribe kicked off their hardest working member because he was grating on every one like 20-grit sandpaper. This happens everywhere, folks. Those who play well with others get extra slack.)[/reality tv interjection]

Folks in the media don’t want to admit that Manny gets so much slack because he is so likable, they’d rather chalk it up to his hitting prowess. But the fact remains that even after a statistically down season, Manny still seems to get away with posing after home runs, goofing around in left field, and saying dumb things about losing.

The fact of the matter is, no one wants to admit that we are swayed more by our emotions than by the logic of statistics, but we are. The media certainly doesn’t want to admit it, which is why they so often fall back on the “Manny being Manny” line. What they are basically saying is, “We like Manny, so he is allowed to do things that others might not get away with”.

Am I okay with that? You bet.

I like Manny too.

Tags: Manny being Manny