There have been a few times in my life as a sports fan where I've seen something happen even before it does. You obsess over our American Sporting Culture like I do and eventually you'll feel that you can predict the future. That has happened to me just twice, once when I told my old Boston College roomie Matt Rutledge that Terrell Davis would have a migraine during the Super Bowl and once as I knelt by the on-deck circle for a Red Sox/Indians game sometime in the late summer of 2000. For those of you who don't know, I was kneeling there because I had lucked my way into the position of batboy for the Boston Red Sox. Its a long and fun story that I will get into more and more as I write, but at this moment I was in awe of a ridiculously strong Cleveland Indians lineup and one Manny Ramirez. As Ramirez rocked back and forth in the batters box that game, I remember thinking to myself - this man is about to be a Free Agent. I began picturing him in a Red Sox uniform. A pipe dream, a whim. I quickly snapped back into reality and moved on. After all, this was the 2000 Boston Red Sox we are talking about. Sellouts were not yet a foregone conclusion, the team was about to be put up for sale, we needed more starting pitching, and most of all, the Indians were thriving due to revenue from Jacobs Field, which was selling out every night.
Manny Ramirez did indeed come to my Boston Red Sox in the winter of 2001. I was a Senior at Boston College in a Mod Full of Sox employees and fans. I'll never forget the excitement that we all felt when the deal was announced. After the Sox had missed out on Mike Mussina, Dan Duquette had thrown himself and the Sox headlong into the Manny Chase. We watched the SportsCenter special with Jeff Moorad finalizing the deal and laughed as Manny tried to bring his own clubhouse guy from Cleveland with him. You can imagine the number of jokes that winter about how Manny was coming to Boston because he heard the batboy gave the best BJs in the league. We laughed, we celebrated, we were excited. That's what I choose to remember about Manny Ramirez. The excitement and fun he brought to my life personally and to Red Sox Nation in general back in 2001. There was a youthful exuberance then, a sign of things to come for our team. We had spent the money on a surefire Hall of Famer in his prime and we were going to get eight to ten years to enjoy it. And without further ado and in some semblance of chronological order, here are my favorite Manny moments.
1. First Impressions
For a guy who isn't the tallest man in the world, I am always amazed that my first impression of Manny Ramirez was that he was short. The team got home from a season opening road trip that included Hideo Nomo's no-hitter at Camden Yards and I'm watching them all come in, running down a mental checklist of new guys. Nomar strides by with a smile and here comes the Feared Slugger Manny Ramirez and he's like 5'8" tall?!?! I kept looking around for the rest of him. I mean , fans always picture the men who hit the ball as far as Manny to be larger than life, behemoths. Later in the year, the Sox acquired Dante Bichette. Bichette looked like a Slugger. He was huge. Manny was, in a word, underwhelming. He bounced in, even after three in the morning and smiled. I figured that was a good sign, even if his height wasn't. Before I could think any more about it, the clubhouse guys and I began a long night of getting the clubhouse ready for our season opener against Minnesota the next day. On the night I first met Manny Ramirez, I got three hours sleep on the clubhouse floor the night before my first and only Opening Day.
2. The Fist Bump
The voicemail was waiting for me after the game. "Dude, Birt and I totally saw you giving dap to Manny after that homerun. Unreal." It was one of my best friends growing up, Sean, checking in to remind me how ridiculous my life had become. Manny, in a sign of things to come, had stepped to the plate on both of our Opening Day Debuts at Fenway and hit a bomb over the Green Monster on his first swing. That fist bump was probably my favorite memory of Fenway. A cool, rainy day following a night with barely any sleep and the place was alive and rocking. As he crossed home plate, Manny jogged by with a quick fist bump and a smile. It was like living in a dream.
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