Long Live Manny Ramirez, And Other Mysteries That’ll Never Be Solved

Manny Ramirez left baseball as a mysterious, legendary, historic disgrace. And he’ll always be my favorite baseball player of all time. My obsession with him began in Boston, where the only tradition more fetishized than the Red Sox is agonizing over the Red Sox.

Every loss is met with deep, profound self-pity and fatalistic dread. Even when they win, it’s just a cause for neurosis. As if happiness is just prolonging the inevitable. With Red Sox fans, it was never a question of whether they’d get their hearts broken, but how badly.

So what better antidote to this mopey mosaic than Manny?

Next to a fanbase that cared way too much about a team and cursed their destiny in any big moments, here was this superstar that existed in his own stratosphere, wholly detached from the bizarre neurosis that governed the world around him. It drove teammates and coaches, but when the game was on the line or the Sox were in the playoffs, that detachment is what scared the crap out of opponents. In any fight, beware of the guy who doesn’t care.

I loved him for all of it. Manny--just by being himself--simultaneously destroyed all the myths about how superstars should look and act, and at the same time, he launched a myth of his own. People remember all the zany stories, but don’t let that distract you from Manny’s true legacy: he was fun and funny, but as a clutch-hitter, he was a f**king terror. Ask a Yankees fan.

He was Gilbert Arenas, if Gil had won two titles and put up Hall-of-Fame numbers for a decade.

Of course, the last few years of his career stained all this. Which is why Jeff Passan’s article at Yahoo! Sports (“Manny Ramirez: Huge Talent, Colossal Waste”) seemed to sum up everyone’s feelings when Manny retired last Friday, avoiding a 100-game PED suspension, and putting the finishing touches on a complete self-destruction over the past year or so. An excerpt:

And so we bid adieu to Manuel Aristides Ramirez Onelcida, superlative talent and undeniable waste, who caps what should’ve been a marvelous career with another taint. Manny’s legacy could have been as the most pure and accomplished right-handed hitter since Joe DiMaggio. Manny’s legacy is trying to get pregnant as a 38-year-old male.

In other words, because Manny’s story is more complicated than Joe DiMaggio, it’ll be remembered for its most embarassing chapters. That strikes me as... Bullshit? Yes, bullshit.

The perfect rebuttal came from Tom Scocca at Slate:

Moralizing is a reflex now. Yahoo Sports offered a commentary under the headline “Ramirez was a supreme talent, colossal waste,” in which writer Jeff Passan declared that Ramirez had tainted “what should’ve been a marvelous career.”
What did Ramirez waste? He was a superb hitter for a long, long time. He retires with 2,574 hits, 1,544 runs, and 555 home runs. He led the Cleveland Indians to two pennants and the Boston Red Sox to two world championships.

Yeah, he took steroids that probably inflated those numbers, and no, he never really apologized for it. But if you tested positive for steroids during a period of time called “The Steroid Era”, wouldn’t an apology be a little redundant?

In any case, that’ll probably be what costs Manny his rightful legacy next to DiMaggio and the rest of baseball’s deities. He never cared enough to build up good will with the ones who deify these guys, and absent a sympathetic media, there was always skepticism.

Now, because it’s easier to tell someone the world is flat than explain the solar system, Manny will go down as an enigma who never quite figured it out. But to me, what defies our understanding will always make for the most memorable lessons.

So maybe he won’t be a Hall-of-Famer, but if my son ever likes baseball, I’ll sit down and tell him about Manny Ramirez, the alien goofball that could hit to outer space. And my son won’t get it.

Some people, you have to experience for yourself.

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. For more on Manny, check out the New Yorker’s profile of him from a few years back. Now, in honor of Manny, let’s roll through some other strangeness.

The Best Thing You’ll Read This Week. As you may have heard, a couple of college basketball players at San Diego were implicated in a point shaving scandal this past week. It’s surprising, but not unheard of. As long as the NCAA refuses to pay athletes, this stuff will keep happening. Even if they do pay athletes, it might still happen. There’s history here.

My friend Ray Gustini took a look at how, exactly, you engineer a points-shaving scandal, and it included a link to a magnificent Sports Illustrated piece from 30 years. Here, Henry Hill (the mobster who inspired Goodfellas) talks about how he bought Boston College’s basketball team.

After the players showed up, we started off with general B.S. conversation. I asked how the team was doing, and they said they had a really good shot to make the NCAAs. or at least the NIT. They knew they had a damn good team, and they did. They finished 21-9 that year, so nobody can accuse me of lousing up their season. We talked about their careers, and they both felt they were either too small or not good enough to make the pros.

I asked them questions because I wanted to know what was possessing them to go into this venture. The players ordered dinner from room service. Both of them had lobster at about $13 or $14 a throw, but what’s a few dollars among new friends? And we ordered some wine and drank a bottle or two. I don’t remember what kind, but I think that’s understandable. Because of the Lufthansa job, I obviously had a lot on my mind. Look at it this way: I had just fried some very big fish, so it was hard for me to always keep my mind on the guppies. Know what I mean?

First of all, doesn’t he sound exactly like Ray Liotta? He even mentions the Lufthansa job! If you love Goodfellas, go read it now. And if you don’t love Goodfellas, what the hell is wrong with you?

Regardless, the article itself is fascinating on its own. I went to BC, where there’s a history of athlete gambling issues, and they spend a ridiculous amount of time lecturing people about getting involved in gambling. I always thought it was ridiculous, but it all makes sense now:

The more I thought about [my gambling loss], the madder I got. So I called Kuhn at his home in Boston. I still have his old number right here in my book. I started screaming at him, “If you’re not gonna do what you’re supposed to do, if you’re not gonna live up to the deal you made, just forget about it. I’ll walk away from it now. Just don’t make me go blow another $25,000 or $50,000. Now I gotta bet twice as much to get even for the last game.” I just spoke to him, laid the law down. Then I decided to get a little rambunctious on the phone. I reminded him that he couldn’t play basketball with broken fingers.

“I decided to get a little rambunctious”? ... Jesus. If something like this came out in 2011, it would almost certainly crash Twitter and Facebook, inspire 10,000 hours of Outside The Lines, and it’d probably even generate a Congressional investigation.

Clearly, we all need to spend more time combing through the Sports Illustrated archives.

The NFL Lockout In A Thousand Words. If you ever need an overview of the NFL Lockout, you won’t do much better than this piece from James Surowiecki at the New Yorker:

Bonus points because it’s from an economist at the New Yorker, giving it instant street cred with all the stodgy old skeptics who might otherwise do something crazy like blame this on greedy athletes.

Apropos of nothing, this NBA commercial is pretty much the best thing ever.

Instead of producing new ads for every playoffs season, one year, the NBA should just dig into their archives and run an all-80s campaign. I mean, for God’s sake, that ad featured HALL AND OATES.

Everything You Ever Heard About The Wonderlic Was A Lie. Of course, if you really believed the Wonderlic was an accurate indicator for a football player’s decision making, then that was your first problem. Still, Jonah Leher’s guest spot for ESPN was pretty great.

Scouts believe a quarterback who isn’t smart, at least by [the Wonderlic] measure, won’t be able to handle the mental rigors of the game. There’s only one problem with this way of thinking: It’s completely wrong.

Many of the most successful quarterbacks in NFL history reportedly had subpar Wonderlic results. Donovan McNabb scored a 14 and Brett Favre a 22, while Randall Cunningham, Dan Marino and Terry Bradshaw each scored 15. What’s more, several QBs who had unusually high marks -- guys like Alex Smith and Matt Leinart, who scored 40 and 35, and were top-10 picks in their respective drafts -- have struggled in the NFL, largely because they make poor decisions on the field.

You Know They’re Drinking Ace Of Spades Up There, Right? Jay-Z got hit with a $50,000 fine from the NBA last week after he had improper contact with the Kentucky basketball team. So, now seems like a good time to explain why Jay’s got 99 problems, but a $50,000 fine ain’t one.

Because 50 grand isn’t cool. Neither is publicly announcing that you’ll be boycotting a certain brand of champagne anymore because the owner doesn’t like hip hop, promping all of your peers to follow suit, and costing said champagne brand millions.

(Err... Actually, that is kind of awesome.)

You know what’s really cool? After you boycott the other brand, endorse a new champagne by popping a few of their bottles in your music video, not telling anyone that you’ve secretly struck a deal that guarantees you half their profits, along with equity in their entire operation.

This is all came to light in an article from the Atlantic that’s a few years old and no longer found on their website, but it’s archived here. For what it’s worth, Jay still denies everything, but wouldn’t you? Anyway, it’s a pretty fascinating read that ultimately turns up this:

The production cost per bottle of Armand de Brignac [Ace of Spades] is about $13; the wholesale price is $225. The maximum output is 60,000 bottles per year. If Jay-Z splits the $212-per-bottle profit evenly with Cattier and Sovereign, a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests his annual take would be a little over $4 million. One of my sources confirmed that number, and added that Jay-Z may have received equity in Sov­ereign Brands worth about $50 million. All for dropping a few lyrical references and featuring Armand de Brignac in a couple of videos.

And that is why Jay-Z isn’t sweating losing 50 grand to David Stern.

Terrifying Or Fascinating Or Both? An interview with a “physicist and futurist” named Michio Kaku that left me alternately hopeful and terrified about the potential advances for the future. A sample:

In the next 10 years or so, computers will be 1,000 times more powerful than today, which means they’ll be 1,000 times cheaper. They will probably be what electricity is today: everywhere and nowhere. That’s the future of computing: cloud computing. We’ll also have flexible (PC) screens. You will soon be unwrapping your computer screen, because it will be made of intelligent paper. Computer chips will only cost a penny in about 10 to 15 years. Wallpaper will be intelligent. You’ll be talking to the wall, and be able to change its color or the pictures hanging there. You’ll have a TV screen in the wall. We’re developing this type of intelligent wallpaper right now.

Another example is the contact lens, a little object just like a jeweler’s lens that you flip over your eye, which will also be intelligent. So when you talk to somebody, your contact lens will identify who this person is. His or her biography and name will be printed out in the lens. And if someone speaks German or another language, you’ll see subtitles underneath in real time, as that person speaks. We’re already developing prototypes.

And a few years later... ROBOTS WILL RUN THE WORLD. No, seriously:

Primitive thought-controlled robots already exist. Honda already has a thought-controlled robot that can carry out four basic functions. Today, you can put a chip into a brain, connect a chip to a laptop, and move the cursor on the screen by thinking. Stroke victims that are totally paralyzed can use this technology today in order to surf the web, write e-mails. Thought-controlled objects are going to be one of the ways that we will interact with the computers of the future.

Fascinating, terrifying.

And Now, Your Moment Of Zen. This is a few weeks old, but Slim Thug Sued For Pistol Whipping A Man During A Business Meeting might be the most hip-hop news story of all time. And it gives us the perfect excuse to relive the greatest Daily Show segment ever: