Manny Ramirez finally signed with the Dodgers yesterday, ending the longest and perhaps most confusing drama of baseball's offseason. After declining a two-year, $45 million contract in November, Manny's agent, Scott Boras, and the Dodgers negotiated for nearly five months, eventually agreeing upon a... two-year, $45 million contract. If you're bewildered by this, you probably don't know much about Manny Ramirez.
Manny has often been described as one of the most enigmatic -- for lack of a better word that won't get you sued for libel -- sluggers in the history of the game. But for all the negative things you hear about Manny being Manny, it's pretty damn entertaining.
The anecdotes about this guy are literally almost endless. There was the time he trotted into the outfield with a water bottle in his back pocket -- perfect for making a sliding catch, I'm sure -- and the time a game was delayed because he had gone into the Green Monster to use the bathroom. There was the time he said he was aiming to win a Gold Glove in left field but thought it might be difficult if he kept getting pulled in the late innings for a defensive replacement. And of course there was that play last year in Camden Yards when Manny made a running catch on a fly ball, climbed the wall and high-fived the one Red Sox fan in a sea of black and orange Orioles jerseys, then turned around and threw the ball in to double-up a runner that had been on first base -- all in just a few seconds.
And you know what else? These aren't even the best Manny stories!
Back when he was with the Indians, his teammates were all gathered around a television watching the O.J. Simpson case. When Manny was told that the police were "chasing O.J.," he promptly asked, "What did Chad do?" He was referring to teammate Chad Ogea.
In 2004, when the Red Sox won the World Series, Manny didn't go to the annual White House reception for Series winners because his grandmother passed away (don't worry -- that's clearly not the funny part). Then, when the Sox won again in 2007, Manny again skipped, and President Bush remarked, "I'm sorry Manny Ramirez isn't here, I guess his grandmother died again." After Manny heard, he fired back, "What does he know? I voted for him once, but not this time." Of course, Bush, being a second-term president, wasn't up for re-election.
So it's pretty clear that wherever Manny Ramirez lives, it's probably not on this planet. And maybe that's why Manny forced his way out of Boston. Maybe that's why his negotiations took so long to go nowhere. But I think someone else had a pretty big part in it too: Scott Boras.
There's no telling how big of a role Boras played in Manny leaving Beantown, but considering this is the guy who got A-Rod to opt out of his last contract during the World Series -- not even waiting for the offseason to begin -- I think it's fair to assume that he was pulling some strings. And while the details of that are sketchy, the details of the contract negotiations are not.
It was Boras, not Manny, who was making the situation impossible. At the beginning of negotiations, Boras demanded deferred money so that the contract's total value could be higher. Then, when the Dodgers offered deferred money, Boras demanded that there be no deferred money so the present-day value would be higher. The Dodgers even think that Boras didn't relay all of their proposals to Manny, something he's required to do as an agent.
So while Manny isn't the most normal character, don't blame him for these abnormal negotiations. Who even knows if he understands the difference between total value and present-day value or what the hell deferred money means.
I'm just happy that he's finally suiting up in a baseball uniform again. Now we can finally get back to what's actually interesting: Manny being Manny.
--
David Heck is a junior majoring in philosophy. He can be reached at David.Heck@tufts.edu.
