The two sides of Manny being Manny
BILL SHAIKIN / BASEBALL SUNDAY REPORT
The Red Sox are doing a lot better without an unhappy Manny Ramirez batting cleanup than the Dodgers are with a happy Manny in the No. 4 hole.
BOSTON -- Turns out Jeff Kent isn't the only guy who hits well when he bats ahead of Manny Ramirez.
Big Papi knows.
For the first time in six years, David Ortiz is not hitting ahead of Ramirez. How does Ortiz like it?
"I got, like, 17 walks on the last road trip," Ortiz said. "What do you think?"
That is less a dissent than an observation. It's been one month since Ramirez and the Boston Red Sox filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences.
Ramirez is out of sight and out of mind here. He is thousands of miles away, with the Dodgers, teetering on baseball oblivion. The Red Sox got rid of one of the best hitters in baseball history and got better, pending an October test.
The Red Sox might not be able to win a World Series without Ortiz and Ramirez crushing opposing pitchers, but they're more than happy to try.
Ramirez wanted out, as he had so many times before. This time, the Red Sox wanted him out.
"I think it is good both ways," Ortiz said. "Manny is happy. No more controversy between him and the team.
"When you don't want to be in a place, you just don't want to be in a place. He was here for eight years. He got tired of being here."
His teammates got tired of him, apparently. Since the trade, Ramirez said, he has traded text messages with Ortiz, spoken occasionally with infielder Alex Cora, and heard from no other Boston player -- except when second baseman Dustin Pedroia overheard Cora talking to Ramirez and tossed in a hello.
They had heard enough from him already.
"He was very public about what he wanted," Cora said.
"The Red Sox don't deserve a player like me," Ramirez told ESPN in the days preceding the trade.
They had heard enough questions about him. Cora likened those days to the ones before the New York Mets fired Willie Randolph as manager, when every question to every player every day revolved around what might happen to Randolph.
"Same thing here," Cora said. "We were getting our [butts] kicked by Anaheim and the Yankees, and everybody was pointing the finger at Manny."
It got so ridiculous, Cora said, that teammates had to answer when the Boston media determined Ramirez had run too slowly to first base on one particular double play.
"I saw Manny running 5.9 a lot of times," Cora said.
Boston General Manager Theo Epstein said he did not consult with players before deciding to trade Ramirez but did spend plenty of time around them.
