I’ll tell you what is going on with Manny Ramirez, and really, it should come as no surprise. What we have here is a clear cut case of a stoner quitting cold turkey, with catastrophic results. In just the past month Manny has engaged in fisticuffs with Kevin Youkilis, thrown a 60 year old man to the ground, and is hitting in the low .200s. This is not Manny being Manny. Where has the “Hey, whatever man” attitude gone? Where is all the head rubbing and home run admiring? The daydreaming in left field? Manny’s actions paint him as irritable, moody, tempermental, and hence, barring the possibility that he has somehow or another become the first human male to menstruate, I conclude that he has given up pot.
Manny isn't High and neither is his Batting Average.
Now, sure, you’re thinking, “How would you know that Manny used to be high all the time?”, and rightfully so. The truth is that I have never hung out with Manny, or stood near him, or discussed my favorite Allman Brothers album with him over a Burrito and a large Mountain Dew, though god knows I want to. If that was going to stop me from making ridiculous claims about a total stranger’s drug use then…well, there would be no Babcock Report to speak of.
The case:
First, we all remember a while back when Manny put his grill up for sale on ebay. This should have been our first warning sign that something was wrong. It has been scientifically proven by a number of unbiased medical publications that a disinterest in grilling is one of the top five warning signs of Marijuana withdrawal. I don’t know what the winning bid for the grill was but I wonder if whoever has it now can sleep at night knowing that they own a shiny stainless steel flavorizing piece of Manny’s soul. May all your steak tips be overdone, and your chicken dry and stiff like the leather of my grandfather’s shoes.
Julian Tavares during the great Visine shortage of 2006.
Secondly, we all know that throughout history all great Stoners have come in pairs: Cheech and Chong, Simon and Garfunkel, Jay and Silent Bob, Ricky Williams and his depressed Indian alter-ego Richard Williams, and not to be outdone, Manny and Julian Tavares. When the Red Sox designated Tavares for assignment this spring they broke up one of the greatest pairs to burn one down since Bob Dylan and John Lennon shared a J back in the 1960s. How can we expect Manny to be a dominant player again when there is no Bill to his Ted? I can remember fondly the days when Manny would sit quietly in the dugout nonchalantly stroking Tavares’ head, make his way to the batters box, and promptly deliver a timely 2 run double. This begs the question…was Tavares Manny’s dealer? One thing is for certain, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Curt Schilling.
God Damn Hippies!
Finally, the recent outbursts of physical violence make it clear to me that Manny could not possibly be smoking pot. Take the Youkilis incident. I’m pretty sure that if you were high you would want to stay far away from Kevin Youkilis. He is way too intense for a stoner to handle. He also has a shaved head and a hardcore goatee, not exactly a stoner-friendly countenance. If Manny had been stoned during the altercation he would probably have reacted differently…that is to say that he would still have watched the bench-clearing brawl from the dugout, but when Youkilis approached him wondering why he wasn’t involved he would have already forgotten that the fight had happened and would have shrugged and then asked a batboy for a slurpee and a small soft serve vanilla ice cream in one of those little helmets. I am sure of this, don’t ask me why, just trust that I have a sense for these things.
Furthermore, I have scoured the annals of history and I could not come across one single incident where a stoned professional athlete has attacked a 60 year old Traveling Secretary over 16 tickets to his own baseball game. It has never happened. You may think I am crazy but it is the truth.
The Good Old Days
Also, after doing an intensive statistical analysis I have concluded that Manny’s Runs Batted In (RBIs) decline in direct proportion to his Righteous Bonghits Inhaled (RBIs). In addition I also noted the same trend with his AVG, (that is Acquired Video Games) and his OPS (Open-faced Peanutbutter Sandwiches). I know not all of you are familiar with Stonermetrics, but I assure you that several Major League ball-clubs have hired Stonermetricians and are implementing these very same statistical analyses into their player evaluation systems. Simply put, we have all felt that Manny was not hitting .420, and now I have the statistics to prove it.
Will Manny ever return to form? Red Sox fans, myself included, can only hope. I miss the fun-loving Manny. I never imagined that in my lifetime Manny would be involved in two physical altercations with members of the Red Sox organization, or two physical altercations of any kind for that matter. But Manny, for your sake, ask JD Drew to pass that shit, because I don’t know if you’ve checked lately but his SLG (Serious Latenight Gorditas) is through the roof.
2 comments:
In arguably the greatest article ever written about Manny Ramirez (I say arguably because of this most recent Babcock Report) the author broached the subject:
"Ramirez’s appearance—he styles his hair in dreadlocks, wears a uniform cut for a sumo wrestler, and smiles broadly and indiscriminately—hints at this extracurricular flakiness, and even gives off a whiff of pothead. (In 2002, he requested that the song “Good Times,” by Styles P, be played over the Fenway Park P.A. system before one of his at-bats, and unsuspecting fans were treated to lyrics such as 'Every day I need a ounce and a half . . . take a blunt, just to ease the pain . . . I get high, high, high.') During pitching changes at Fenway, he has been known to disappear behind a door in the left-field wall, and on one occasion he nearly missed the resumption of play—an averted transgression that he at one point blamed on his bladder."
It was as if he was trying to reveal it to the very people who cheered him everyday. Also I recall a story about a certain odor coming from Manny's residence when he lived in a hotel during his first year or so with the Sox. As my dad would say, "It smelled like a burning field in Vietnam." For the record my dad was never near Manny's hotel room. That's just how he describes pot.
Oh and here is the Manny article - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/23/070423fa_fact_mcgrath?currentPage=all
This all makes a lot of sense. I love the way that Youk plays the game, but I don't think I'd ever want to hang out with him. He is the real life embodiment of Farva from Super Troopers.
Listening to them talk about this incident on the Big Show yesterday was painful. Ordway is nothing special, but without him that show is ridiculously bad. There was this 5 minute segment where they were arguing about word choice "I'm not judging anything!" "Well, you're trying to assess the situation, that's why you're giving your opinion." "You can put words in my mouth all you want to, but I'm not assessing anything" "But you're analyzing the situation, we're all assessing it, that's what we've been doing all day." "Not me, I'm just wondering about what caused this." "Oh, ok, sorry, so you're wondering.."
Awful radio. I need satellite radio so I can hear mike and the mad dog.
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