MANNY BEING MANNY

Manny being Manny.

Those three words open up Pandora’s box in my feeble little mind.



I went from admiring his hitting ability in Cleveland, to loathing his very existence during his time in Boston (I’m a Yankees fan) to jumping on the Mannywood express after his trade to Los Angeles in the middle of last season.



As a long suffering Dodgers fan, it was impossible to not fall in love with Manny.



He literally took the city by storm, sending aftershocks through a city that doesn‘t flinch unless it registers at least 5 on the Richter scale. Manny single handedly turned the Dodgers into contenders overnight. He arrived in L.A. on July 31st 2008 as part of a three way trade between the Red Sox, Pittsburg Pirates and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The key players involved were Ramirez to the Dodgers , Jason Bay from the Pirates to Boston and Andy LaRoche and prospects from the Dodgers and Boston to Pittsburg. First Pau Gasol, then this....I love L.A.

I remember the hoopla well, my 21 year old nephew has been a Manny fanatic since his days in Cleveland. Four score and seven Christmas’s ago I went against my Yankee loving laurels and bought him a home white Manny Ramirez authentic #24 Red Sox jersey. No name on the back, just crispy white with red lettering. I have to admit, it was beautiful…even if it was a Boston Red Sox jersey. He moved to Colorado to attend college on a baseball scholarship about a year ago and called me all giddy when the trade went down. He may be a Manny fan, but he’s a Dodgers fan above all else so this was his version of a baseball wet dream, little did I know it would turn out to be mine too.



From the day he pulled the #99 Dodgers uniform, the City of Angels was infatuated. He kept our attention and allowed us to dream championship dreams that we hadn’t felt since the Kirk Gibson era. The next two months saw Manny put on the most incredible display of hitting that I’ve ever seen and in the process the Dodgers rose to the top of the National League West.



It was simply magical.



That’s saying a lot from a city that watched Magic Johnson ply his trade and become a legend. I got to see 5 Dodgers games in person during that time, all from the same field level seats behind the Dodgers dugout and the left field pavilion with a crystal clear view of Manny. The buzz in the air was electric. Every time he emerged from the dugout to take the field, he’d warm up with a game of catch with the batboy but judging from the reaction of the dreadlock wig sporting crowd you’d think he had the cure for cancer and they were all stricken. He hit like a man among boys, winning National League Player of the Month honors for August 2008 He went 44-for 106, hitting .415 with nine homeruns, 25 RBI, 21 runs scored and seven doubles. He would finish the season with the Dodgers with 17 HR’s, 53 RBI and a .396 batting average. Including his pre-trade stats with Boston, his stats for 2008 were 37 HR’s and 121 RBI’s. He would finish 4th in the NL MVP voting, but keep in mind, he only played two months in the NL. Though they fell short of a World Series, losing to the eventual champion Phillies in the NLCS. It was a great run by L.A. and the playoff starved fans knew the had witnessed something special.



The drama continued throughout his free agent off season with him holding out until the bitter end and eventually accepting L.A.’s original offer of $45 million over two years…but only because there were no other suitors willing to go that high, otherwise he’d have been long gone. A few days ago he came out and said he’d like to play for Cleveland again before retiring., this after the free agent soap opera and the new season barely underway. Fans in LaLa Land are dumbfounded.



Last night he hit two homeruns in the Dodgers 9-5 victory over the Colorado Rockies. Between homeruns he managed to collect an error in the box score on a routine fly ball by nonchalantly trotting over to snap it up…but dropped it instead. He seemed completely unfazed, almost entertained by his miscue.



His very next at bat he hit a towering flyball over the fence for his second homerun and calmly ran the base paths with a wry grin.



This guy knows drama better than Lindsay Lohan, Brittany Spears and TNT combined.
I don’t know whether to love him or hate him, but I can’t wait for the next episode of must see tv.



The burning questions enquiring minds in the Southland want to know are:
1. Will he lead the Dodgers to a World Series Championship before going back to Cleveland?



2. Will local notorious baseball groupie Alyssa Milano get a taste of Manny being Manny before the Dodgers season comes to a close.