Latest Episode Of Manny Being Manny A Reminder Of What Could Have Been For Manny Ramirez

At 48 years old and nine years removed from his last big league action, Manny Ramirez should be into the portion of his post-baseball life where “Manny Being Manny” tales are told in reverential and increasingly apocryphal fashion, particularly when done so over adult beverages with fellow Hall of Famers at Cooperstown’s Otesaga Hotel.

Did Manny really think teammate Chad Ogea was being chased by the Los Angeles cops on June 17, 1994? Did he really drive around with uncashed checks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars? What was he doing inside the Green Monster during pitching changes? Did he really cut off a Johnny Damon throw in shallow left field?

(Yes. And it was glorious. And David Newhan ended up legging out an inside-the-park homer)

In other words, he should be his generation’s Rickey Henderson: A quirky, occasionally disruptive superstar whose wrinkles are smoothed over with time and the appreciation for just how great a player he was.

Instead, the latest “Manny Being Manny” tale is taking place halfway around the world and audacious enough to warrant some attention even here in 2020, the weirdest year on record. With baseball news at a trickle during the coronavirus shutdown, you’ve probably already read/heard about Ramirez expressing interest in playing in Taiwan, the only country in the world playing regular season baseball at the moment.

It’s cool and quirky and both not unprecedented for a high-profile player as well as a case of Manny Being Manny, but it’s also a bit sad and a reminder Ramirez’s baseball twilight didn’t have to unfold like this.

Ramirez should absolutely be hanging out on stage at the Clark Sports Center every summer, taking his place with his fellow all-time greats during Induction Sunday. His 555 homers are the 15th-most all-time, placing him in between Reggie Jackson and Mike Schmidt, each of whom cruised into the Hall of Fame on their first try with more than 90 percent of the vote. Ramirez ranks 20th all-time with 1,831 RBIs, in between first-ballot Hall of Famer Dave Winfield and Al Simmons, who somehow needed 10 tries to get in during balloting in the 1940s and 1950s.

He is one of eight right-handed hitters to hit at least .350 with 30 homers and 100 RBIs in a season during the expansion era (1961-present), and Ramirez came within a base hit in 2002 (when he hit an AL-best .349 while adding 33 homers and 107 RBIs) of becoming the first player to do it twice (Albert Pujols did it in 2003 and 2008).

Ramirez also thrived in the postseason, during which he hit .295 while ranking first all-time with 29 homers and second all-time with 78 RBIs in 493 plate appearances, the third-most ever. (Important contextual alert: Ramirez played his entire career in the three-round playoff format, which gave him 200-plus more at-bats than the likes of Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra)

He was the MVP of the World Series in 2004, when the Red Sox finally won it all for the first time in 86 years. And Ramirez delivered the most iconic moment of the Red Sox’s next title-winning run three years later with this mammoth walk-off shot against the Angels in Game 2 of the ALDS.

Except…unlike Henderson, whose most egregious behavior as a ballplayer involved the admittedly dumb act of playing cards with Bobby Bonilla while their teammates were getting eliminated in Game 6 of the 1999 NLCS, Ramirez’s disruptiveness turned downright hostile during the 2008 season.

Ramirez nearly fought Kevin Youkilis in the dugout and shoved 64-year-old traveling secretary Jack McCormick to the ground during an argument over Ramirez’s large ticket request. Ramirez, famous for requesting oddly-timed days off and taking unusually long to recover from seemingly mild ailments, had another spate of vague injuries and criticized upper management in the days leading up to the Red Sox dealing him to the Dodgers at the July 31 deadline. (It should be noted Ramirez hit .347 with an OPS of 1.060 in his final month in Boston)

Ramirez, dubbed “Mannywood” out west, mashed so much in Los Angeles (he hit .396 with 19 homers, 63 RBIs and a 1.232 OPS in 53 games) that he managed to finish fourth in the NL MVP voting. But he played in just 199 big league games over his final three seasons, a span in which his two PED busts far overshadowed his still-elite production (.287 with 28 homers and 106 RBIs for an OPS+ of 142).

In September 2011, about five months after his second PED bust, Ramirez was arrested for battery following a domestic dispute with his wife Juliana, though charges were dropped when his wife could not be served with a subpoena.

Ramirez, who remains married to Julianna, has struck a softer tone over the last several years and was even hired as a minor league player/coach by Cubs president Theo Epstein, who was the Red Sox general manager for Ramirez’s final five-plus seasons in Boston. And if Ramirez ends up playing in Taiwan, it’ll be the second time he does so. He hit .352 in 49 games for the EDA Rhinos in 2013.

Wanting to play well beyond his peak days for the love of the game is an endearing quality shared by Henderson, who played in independent leagues until he was 46, and Julio Franco, who played overseas deep into his 50s. But in Ramirez’s case, it’s a reminder he was far closer to Henderson, a first-ballot Hall of Famer, than Franco, a terrific if just shy of Cooperstown-caliber big leaguer.

Despite his monstrous resume, Ramirez is a long shot to join Henderson in the Hall of Fame. There’s a glimmer of hope for Ramirez, who jumped from 22.8 percent of the vote to 28 percent this year and should benefit from a paucity of slam-dunk first-ballot candidates on the horizon as well as a younger electorate that will likely be less punitive towards players with PED stains and character concerns.

But with only six years left on the writers’ ballot, it’s hard to see the latest installments of “Manny Being Manny” playing out anywhere but anonymous diamonds halfway around the world instead of where he should have found his most receptive and welcoming audience — on a stage and a hotel in Cooperstown with his fellow all-time greats.