Here's what I know...
1) Manny assaulted a 61-year old man for no good reason.
Did Pedro assault Zimmer?
2) Management gave Manny a 1-game suspension, a slap on the wrist, and just the latest example of coddling that they wouldn't give any other player.
Maybe the incident was not as dramatic and egregious as we have been led to believe.
3) In retaliation, Manny, the owner of the some of the finest hitting eyes in league history, takes three strikes down the middle from Rivera without bothering to lift the bat off his shoulders. This is with two out in the ninth, and the Sox in the middle of a rally that has the tying and winning runs on base.
This info was passed thru Bob Lobel on WEEI from Red Sox management. It's funny how Red Sox management on the one hand tells us Ramirez is in decline and not worth an extension, and on the other tells us it's a disgrace he struck out against Rivera, the best closer in league history, who's having his best season in years.
I don't care what he did after that. Personally, I would have banned him from the ballpark after that. I don't like the fact that the Red Sox gave up the best player in the deal, paid the remainder of his salary, and gave up two more players, but I think that tells you how bad the situation got.
And I don't get the angle that the Red Sox demonize their players. Weren't Roger, Pedro, and Nomar traded/released because their asking price far outweighed their performance?
Releasing players is not the problem; it's the longstanding pattern of Red Sox management gratuitously slandering those players thru toadies in the press that is a disgrace. Poisoning the fan base against players is one of the weapons they use in contract negotiations, and then to grease the skids before dumping them. That's obvious and despicable.
We've seen it over and over again.
Doesn't Belichick do the same thing every goddamned year, which we praise him for?
When Asante Samuel was having contract issues last summer, what did BB do? He agreed not to franchise him, and ended the problem.
All Theo had to do was agree to refuse Ramirez' one year option, and the problem with a famously mercurial ahtlete would have ended as recently as this week; Ramirez would have played the season out with gusto. Theo refused to forego Baseball's version of a franchise tag, precipitating this mess with one of the franchise's legendary players.
Didn't this team get noticeably better when Nomar was replaced with Cabrera?
Nomar was a shadow of himself, all but done, at the time of his trade. Manny hit .375 in July and is #6 in the AL in OPS, playing in the weighted AL East, the best division in baseball.
I really don't understand the opinion.