And then he was gone.
Manny Ramirez is scheduled to be in the starting lineup tonight for your Chicago White Sox (but for whatever reason wasn’t). When it was announced he was leaving Sunday evening (or as they call that in internet time “one billion years ago”) I’m sure you went through your own personal range of emotions—I know I did. They went like this: Acknowledgment. Indifference. Resignation. The surprise factor was clearly lacking as this was a scenario reported on by various media outlets for the better part of two weeks and moving an aging, former superstar through the waiver process when you’re miles out of contention in exchange for a few prospects isn’t exactly a novel idea. Oh, what? They DIDN’T get any prospects? A straight salary dump? Wow, what a surprise. At least we have a deep pipeline of prospects waiting in the wings. Oh, right. We don’t. Sigh.
You know what though, I didn’t intend for this to be a post ripping the Dodgers organizational management, it was just supposed to be Manny focused and I’m going to try to bring this thing back to his time with the club. One of my favorite songs is “Statler 2000” by Armchair Martian (and covered by Bad Astronaut…or maybe the other way around, who can even keep them straight) with the seemingly prophetic lyrics: “All I know is you came too quickly/ And left the same” which basically sums up my thoughts completely—he came in out of nowhere, achieved instant rockstar status and made every Dodger game a must-see event…you know, pretty much exactly like he did with Boston. For a solid year we got to see one of the best hitters mash NL pitching and mask an infield full of deficiencies. And then the Homer Bailey fastball off the wrist (or was it Bronson Arroyo? Who can even remember). And then something called hCG? And then the suspension. And then the Disabled List. And then the DL again. And again. And now he’s gone, replaced by Scott Podsednik who is basically the anti-Manny at the plate.
Was it fun having him in town? Absolutely. Will we miss him now that he’s gone? Probably not. The team isn’t going anywhere with him and while it would have been awesome to flip him for something/anything of value we got the full Manny experience and we were better off for it in the end. Oh, and in case you think having Manny on another club means the Dodgers are off the hook for the remainder of his payroll…yeah, sorry—we’re paying that bill for the next few years (hello Andruw Jones!) thanks to the McCourt-Colletti-Enron bookkeeping process. Can we get a new owner now, please?
