Blogs and Stories
Why Manny Ramirez Hates Fans
Plus: Check out Book Beast, for more news on hot titles, authors and excerpts from the latest books.
Max Morse / Getty Images
As Manny Ramirez tests positive for a banned substance and gets slapped with a season-crushing 50-game suspension, an intimate new biography reveals the private life of the Los Angeles Dodgers' oddball slugger.
At one point during the multi-year process of writing the biography of Manny Ramirez, the Los Angeles Dodgers slugger forgot the book existed, telling his new agent he’d never heard of these people claiming to be his biographers. “This was like three years into the project,” says author Jean Rhodes, a professor of psychology at UMass-Boston. “At this point we had already met with him and his family many times. He forgot all about it.”
It was an incident that could be interpreted as a sign of arrogance, but baseball fans recognize it as a simple case of “Manny being Manny.” Ever since joining the Cleveland Indians in 1993, Ramirez has been baseball’s most enduring enigma: one of the best hitters ever to play the game, but at the same time, an inscrutable figure who seems to live on his own planet. After he was traded to the Red Sox in 2001, Ramirez and Boston’s baseball-crazed fans developed a love-hate relationship. They adored him for his skills, but were frustrated that he didn’t appear to take the sport as deadly serious as they did. His final season with the Sox, in 2008, devolved into melodrama. Eager to leave Boston, Ramirez fought with his teammates and appeared listless in the field, nonchalantly refusing to run out ground balls. The enraged Boston fan base accused him of becoming a prima donna, and he left the team midseason in a wake of bad blood.
He would say things to me like, "If this is your whole life then you’ve got to go outside that and get a better life." He just didn't get that Red Sox Nation mentality.
The debacle was caused, says Rhodes, by Ramirez seeing baseball as a simple game, and forgetting that it’s also a high-stakes industry that includes money, media, fame, contracts, and fans. Rhodes, who wrote the authorized biography, Becoming Manny, with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Shawn Boburg, believes this naiveté is what makes Manny such an anomaly and why he holds the public’s fascination. She and Boburg spent hours with Ramirez, his friends, and family, and came away with a startlingly intimate picture of a notoriously press-shy athlete. Rhodes spoke to The Daily Beast about what’s behind the Ramirez’s strange ways.
What’s Manny like in person?
He's very innocent. He's not trying hard to project anything. He's very sincere in a way, almost vulnerable. He's not thinking about the PR implications of what he's saying.
Becoming Manny: Inside the Life of Baseball's Most Enigmatic Slugger. By Jean Rhodes and Shawn Boburg. 320 pages. Scribner. $25.
Usually that’s the type of person the press falls in love with—someone who isn't always spinning. That’s why they loved John McCain. But the press has always had a strained relationship with Manny. In the foreward to your book, sportswriter Leigh Montville compared him to Ted Williams, who also had a strained relationship with the press, but for different reasons.
Yes. Ted would spit at the press box. He just hated them. He got really mad when they started to encroach on his personal life. Manny is different. He just feels like they're too intense. He just wants to play the game and go into his little zone.
Do you think reporters just don’t like Manny? Or is it that they don’t understand him and that’s frustrating?
It's a combination. The frustration had to be there because he just wouldn't talk. He played with the press. There is a story, I'm not sure if I put it in there, where he called a press conference and made everybody wait for an hour. He said, "I'll be right back." Then he came back and said, "I've decided I'm going to give away $3 million of my own money to keep Pedro [Martinez] on the team.” The press went crazy about that and then he and Pedro go in the back and just start cracking up.
Did they write about it?
Yeah, it was in the paper.
You also write that Manny was never comfortable with the intensity of Red Sox fans.
He just didn't get it. He would say things to me like, "If this is your whole life then you’ve got to go outside that and get a better life." He just didn't get that Red Sox Nation mentality.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
How to Fight Like a Girl
Will Doig is the Features Editor at The Daily Beast. He has written for New York, The Advocate, Out, Black Book and Highlights for Children.
Why Women Stay
Will Doig is the Features Editor at The Daily Beast. He has written for New York, The Advocate, Out, Black Book and Highlights for Children.
How to, Uh, Talk to People
Will Doig is the Features Editor at The Daily Beast. He has written for New York, The Advocate, Out, Black Book and Highlights for Children.
When Yankee reliever Mariano Rivera threw three pitches in a row over the plate, Manny stood there with the bat resting on his shoulder. Manny had wanted to take the day off in a game against the Yankees and was refused. Is that the intellectual side of Manny? Or, is it the innocent side? Whatever it is, Manny had no trouble saying no to the opportunity to help his team win a game. I guess he's over the "no" problem.
fantastic interview. more doig please!
Being a star athlete has many perks and some real downsides--but in Boston, it's a mine field that can be more than outrageous. If you don't buddy up to the press, you're doomed. If you are Dominican and you don't buddy up to the press, you're drawn and quartered on your way to hell. In too many respects, the fans and the press are one--jackbutler5555 knows exactly what Manny was doing at the plate and why because the press told him. How did they know? Because they decided that they did.
The Red Sox gave up a Hall of Fame player, for questionable reasons. There's a hole in the line-up, but it will take a long time to admit it. The sportswriters are not given to reflection. He's a great ball player and his behavior was and is absolutely harmless. It was a betrayal and I wish him well.
to iamadog:
I watched the game. The three in a row over the plate were real. The press may have gotten wrong his reason for not swinging, but his paralysis can not be in dispute. But maybe you're right that Manny is some sort of target. I'm open to that. One thing, though, did you base your defense of Manny on what the press told you? If not, how did you reach your conclusion?
Did I miss something?
Where did Manny say he "hated fans?"
How does Manny telling fans not to take
baseball so seriously translate into
"Manny hates fans?"
No wonder people in general
don't trust the media, to tell the absolute
truth, without twisting someone's words,
just so the media can grab attention with a
sensationalized caption.
I was on a high last- night after the Dodger Nat's game because of the win and how the team has been performing. I was hoping that this wouldn't happen(Manny) but deep down I knew it was coming. Nobody made any offers for him in the off season and I thought was kind of strange. When Nomar Garciaparra Join the Dodgers I was excited as my boys watching a parade. I would take them to the games and make them watch him on TV every time he was up to bat. So you can guess how thrilled I was when Manny joined the team. But Manny Ramirez is not bigger than the Dodgers. This is a big disappointment, but the Dodgers are still the Greatest Team of all time. I Don't care if Manny retires today. The Dodgers are still going to the be in contention in the playoffs. His former team fans care more about the bad things he did and blame him for their misfortunes now. He won you two World Series. Manny Did. Now that he's gone he's selfish, he's a cheater, a doper. He's a two time World Series champion. Ingrates! Nomar has never gave us a World Series championship. Manny has not won The Dodgers a world series. But they are still Dodgers. That's all that matters.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
I like will doig.....but what about the drugs? did they set him up or was he beefing up?
ROIDS!
Okay, if Manny was so la-dee-dah about the game, what the f---was he doing taking a female fertility drug to counteract the steroid use? There is no such thing as an "enigma" in baseball. You flatter the man. He is merely a ball player, who likes to dick around with the likes of general managers and journalists.Yes, there are the smart ones, like Mussina, Young, Maddox, Smoltz, Jeter, all great players who aren't improving with age, and there are the likes of Rodriguez, Clemens, Palmero, and Ramirez, who, along with their agent(s) play the rest for fools. Baseball is worse than the AMA in terms of maintaining the time honored code of silence. Time to talk, boys. Stop saving your ass and save the sport.
I need to question this line from the interview:
"I think some of it is racism. People like to attribute laziness to his flowing dreadlocks and his baggy uniform and not running out the pop flies."
Red Sox fans are racist? Since when? We put up with some really crazy behavior from Manny, but the criticism he got was no different than what was leveled at the likes of Ted Williams or Roger Clemens. Mo Vaughan was our God for years. And we even put up with Jim Rice - the most miserable wretch in baseball history. How are Boston fans racist?? There is a lot of lazy journalism in this piece - as noted by Spohia5 about the misleading title.
Thank you.
As a first time user, your comment has been submitted for review. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or two for your comment to be reviewed, depending on the time of week and the volume of comments we receive.
Please log in to leave comments.