Hanley Ramirez Experiences The Wrath Of The Hawk

This is not a man you want mad at you. His name is Andre Dawson, and if you so much as look at him wrong, he’ll put your ass on the floor. Seriously. Don’t look at him. And definitely don’t say the wrong thing to him after you’ve been benched for lack of hustle.

Dawson, 55, was tired Tuesday when he arrived in South Florida after a red-eye flight from Las Vegas. His mood got worse when he arrived at the ballpark before a 1:10 p.m. game against Arizona and learned what Ramirez had said that morning - that he shouldn’t be criticized for lack of hustle because his teammates dogged it, too, and that Gonzalez didn’t have the experience to tell him what to do.

Then Dawson walked through the clubhouse and saw all of the plasma TVs showing ESPN programs with Ramirez’s face next to his inflammatory comments.

Dawson picked up his pace until he found Perez in the coach’s room. “I said, ‘We need to say something to him because obviously he’s not listening,’ ” Dawson recalled. [...]

The door closed, and Andre Dawson looked directly into Hanley Ramirez’s eyes.

”I’m not going to say a lot, because if you say the wrong the thing to me, then you might wind up on the floor on your rear end,’ Dawson said with Tony Perez standing by his side in a coach’s office at Sun Life Stadium.

That’s from this awesome article in the Palm Beach Post, recounting the Hawk’s one-on-one with Hanley Ramirez (Tony Perez was there just to make sure no one got killed).

As if there was any doubt about the persuasiveness of the Hawk, Hanley did apologize to the team and his manager for his actions. Hanley says it was David Ortiz who convinced him to do so. But I think it’s safe to say Dawson loosen him up a bit.