The Boston Herald (according to former WBZ sports director Bob Lobel) is reporting that Manny Ramirez was fined a “six-figured amount” last month for an altercation with one of the Boston Red Sox’s traveling secretaries. And per Lobel, Ramirez “sent a message” to the Red Sox in a July 6 game against the Yankees when he took three straight strikes without swinging while facing New York closer Mariano Rivera.
“Manny was fined six figures to go to a charity,” Lobel said this morning on sports radio WEEI. “That got [Manny’s] attention … he became a petulant child by being punished. No matter what the crime was, pushing an employee, that was the issue … he acted out [after they fined him]. They got his attention. He doesn’t like to be punished in any way, shape, or form… ”
“The thing that most people are forgetting and haven’t talked about is the strikeout in Yankee Stadium,” Lobel said. “The bat on the shoulder for the three pitches from Mariano Rivera. That was a big [expletive] to the Red Sox after the fine. I’m just telling you … there are things in the front office that are perceived … I’m saying that there is a strong feeling that that [three-pitch strikeout] was the message to the Red Sox and it’s a strong feeling that that’s unacceptable … there’s a feeling that he didn’t give it his all, let’s put it that way … I’m just saying the front office has not forgotten that moment. It’s akin to Nomar sitting on the bench [in a game in which Derek Jeter dove into the stands at Yankee Stadium in 2004]. It’s the same thing. It’s an at bat that resonated very strongly in the front office.”
All seemed relatively quiet on the Manny-Red Sox front over the past two years, but now the drama has apparently heated up again. I distinctively remember watching that Sunday Night Baseball game against the Yankees and wondered out loud why the usual free-swinging Ramirez never took the bat off his shoulders. Conspiracy theories in sports annoy me, but this one seems like it has legs.
