In the coming days, sportswriters will tell you that Manny Ramirez is a disgrace joke fraud clown (WARNING: those descriptors will likely be partitioned off into a half-dozen or more consecutive three-word paragraphs). They won’t necessarily be entirely wrong, either; indeed, Manny cheated, and cheating is bad.
Manny Ramirez Storytime: The One In Which He Possesses Multiple Social Security Numbers
I urge you, though, to consider whether it’s possible for a person’s merits to forgive or erase his demerits, and whether Manny’s colorful contributions to the game were worth the artificial statistics. To give an example of what I’m talking about, Baseball Feelings links to a New Yorker story that recounts one of the greatest Manny Ramirez stories of all time. You may still walk away with a dislike for him, but you will at least find it amusing:
According to lore, Ramirez has, or had, two Social Security numbers and five active driver’s licenses—none of which he managed to present to the officer who pulled him over in 1997 for driving with illegally tinted windows and the stereo blasting at earsplitting volume. “The cop knew who he was,” as Sheldon Ocker, the Indians beat reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal, tells it. “He said, ‘Manny, I’m going to give you a ticket.’ Manny says, ‘I don’t need any tickets, I can give you tickets,’ and reaches for the glove compartment. Then he leaves the scene by making an illegal U-turn and he gets another ticket.”
(via share-siblings)
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