Manny Ramirez is reporting late to Spring Training. Again. And the media members are all going to jump on him for doing so. Again.
And I say - leave the guy alone! So he’s skipping part of Spring Training. This, in and of itself, does not matter. Manny Ramirez is a superstar. He is paid to be a great hitter, and that he is. He is not paid to be a good teammate, a good interview, or a natural leader. He’s paid to hit home runs and play like the amazing player he is.

Spring Training isn’t really that important anymore. Players train, on their own, year-round. If they don’t, they aren’t good enough even to be invited, let alone make the team. Manny Ramirez is the King of preparation. He works out, watches tape religiously, and is one of the most prepared hitters in all of baseball. Sure, Schilling is a very prepared pitcher, but he gets days between playing. Manny is watching tape before every game. He gets to the park before most. He produces and the system of him doing whatever he wants (including shutting down last year) is working. Yes, he quit. But we were out of it. The season was effectively over when we traded David Wells, so why punish Manny for shutting down after the management did?

In the end, him not being there just doesn’t matter. Will he hit 2 less home runs becuase he missed 2 weeks of Spring Training? No. Can a World Series be decided in the Spring? No. Get over it people, its not about what he does now, its what he does when you are watching the games that count.
Take your time Manny, and we’ll all cheer for you once you are playing again. Be a pain in the ass if you want, you deserve it.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 at 10:09 pm and is filed under General Postings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.