Budget Fillers

There was a time in Cleveland when Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez and Omar Vizquel formed the heart of a team that gave Indians fans their most significant reason to cheer in decades. They were great players growing into the prime of their careers that several times put the Indians on the precipice of a World Series title that now seems further away then ever.

But players like Thome, Ramirez and Vizquel were never going to spend their careers in Cleveland. We can bitch about the reasons why but the truth is that the identity of a particular player and a particular team is as outdated as the reserve clause.

One of the byproducts of the system that Marvin Miller sold first to the players and eventually to the owners was a revolving door concept of player movement. You take two greedy parties—players and owners—whose economic interests naturally clash and eventually you end up a league full of players who, if there's any length to their careers, each probably average having played with 4 to 5 different teams by the time those careers are over.

If the Indians didn’t create the concept of “small market team” then they were at least at the forefront of the concept. When baseball’s runaway financial structure, driven by the kinds of dollars teams were willing to throw at players like Thome and Ramirez in particular, became too dizzying of a ride for less heeled owners around the league, teams either had to find a better way to make use of the money they had or become, well, the Kansas City Royals.

So for the Indians, like their West Coast cousins, the Oakland As, it was easy to say goodbye to players they never intended to keep and replace them with someone who might vaguely replicate their production at 1/10^th of the price.

As a result, every off season in Cleveland is filled not with splashy free agent signingsbut a smattering of goodbyes followed by acquisitions like Casey Kotchman, Kevin Slowey and Cristian Guzman. Even Derek Lowe fits the profile. It’s the only way that the Indians can think of to keep a budget within reason while still turning a profit for their owners.

But it’s a myth that only teams like Cleveland and Oakland do these sorts of things. The Indians and As may do more of this kind of barrel scraping then others, but there isn’t a team in the major leagues that isn’t in the market for an aging veteran pitcher with a history of success and coming off of arm surgery. Heck, Bartolo Colon was a big part of the Yankees’rotation last season.

That’s why it’s fascinating to watch when players like Thome, Ramirez and Vizquel, players who were such a big part of local fans’ dreams, face their comeuppance. No longer are they prizes to whom teams are still willing to throw indiscriminate money toward but instead they are, in effect, some other team’s Kotchman, Slowey or Guzman.

When the Oakland As signed Ramirez earlier this week, it more than drove home the point. Ramirez is mostly a discredited two time violator of baseball’s drug policy. He could be signed on the cheap because he grew fat and remained stupid and he has a 50-game suspension that still must be served.

But the other reason the As would take a chance on Ramirez is for the same reason that aging baby boomers will still buy tickets to a Paul McCartney concert. McCartney may be 70 years old but his voice is still good enough to make you remember when it was coming out of a 25 year old body.

So it is with Ramirez. He could get as big as Prince Fielder but as long as the sweet batting stroke remains in tact, and As general manager Billy Beane assures us it is, then there is very little to be lost except maybe a half million dollars if Ramirez is a complete bust. As cheap as teams can be, they still think little of giving away $500,000 to a player who could credibly occupy a final roster spot.

Still there is a certain pathetic underpinning to it all, isn’t there? Assuming Ramirez’s lack of self-discipline extended to matters financial, the assumption is that Ramirez signed because he needs the money. He never came across as someone who loved the game given his abject indifference toward its formalities for so many years. It's the sad epilogue really to the far headier days when he and his agent dangled the disingenuous notion of his re-signing with Cleveland under a “hometown discount” before maxing out with the Boston Red Sox.

Take away the two drug violations and Thome’s story closely parallels Ramirez’s. He left Cleveland in much the same way, with his agent trying to portray Indians’ management as the bad guys for not paying him his “value” even as he chased the maximum cash that any other team was willing to pay him knowing full well it wouldn't be Cleveland.

Thome had great years with the Phillies and became a very solid 1 percenter in the process. But age and weight and injuries caught up with Thome and for the last several years he’s been a hobbled mercenary looking for a few bucks and a way to extend his career. He’s now on his fourth team since 2006.

It, too, seems just a tad pathetic. And yet there is something gratifying by the way Thome, like Ramirez, has had to humble himself to those he exploited now that he's just another spare part, a plug hole in some team’s budget, as he clings to baseball even after making well in excess of $100 million during his career.

Then there’s Vizquel. He didn’t get there in the same way as Ramirez or Thome but he’s there all the same. Never the splashy free agent that either Ramirez or Thome was it could well be argued that his value as a baseball player was at least as high as either of them.

Vizquel didn’t leave Cleveland because he was chasing free agent dollars. He left because general manager Mark Shapiro kicked him, his 37 year old body and his relatively modest $6 million a year salary to the curb in favor of a potentially promising Jhonny Peralta who worked much more cheaply. Since then Vizquel went on to start for the San Francisco Giants for years but now finds himself as a 45 year old trying to keep a million dollar salary coming in. As long as he can still field the ball on occasion and doesn’t make waves, he’s the perfect plug hole in some team’s budget as well.

That Vizquel still clings to baseball as a bit player is a sad end to a glorious career. There's no reason not to take the money that some team wants to throw your way but it really is rather sad that in the pursuit of another dollar a player of his stature is willing to tarnish an otherwise glorious career.

In retrospect, it all seems rather ludicrous to have gotten so excited about trying to retain at least Ramirez and Thome, even as I still question Shapiro’s decision to jettison Vizquel when he did. Even if they all had remained in Cleveland and had put up exactly the same numbers as they did for their new teams, there is no certainty that the Indians would have won a World Series.

But even more to the point is simply that they more then prove that as much as major league baseball markets its superstars, the only real way to remain committed as a fan is to love the game more. Players come and go quickly, particularly these days, and their self interests will always break your hearts. But the game itself still endures and is the reason to watch. It’s the only way to be a fan in Cleveland and, frankly, every other city with a major or minor league team.

Lingering Items--Cautionary Tale Edition

The NFL draft is still nearly 3 weeks away, which can only mean one thing: 100 more iterations Tony Grossi's mock draft. Catch the excitement.

Not to pick on Grossi too much, but this really is the problem with the NFL offseason at the moment. The labor issues are complex and the only thing really happening at the moment. Most beat writers like Grossi don't have the inclination to understand them and use the excuse that the public doesn’t care as a way of masking their own laziness.

They just repeat the line about billionaires fighting with millionaires to shorthand the entire discussion without every pausing to think that the more money at stake the more complex the issues.

So they just shy away from the difficult and give us any number of mind numbing mock drafts, some copy editor slaps a headline on it and voila!, news.

Just Friday morning, Grossi submitted his 7th (7th!) mock draft on an unsuspecting public. Because I tend to have the attention span of a puppy when it comes to this sort of thing, I give it all the attention it deserves, which is very little.

First of all, this is just crystal ball gazing taken to high art. The fact that someone like Mel Kiper, Jr. chose to make a living out of it doesn’t somehow elevate it from alchemy to chemistry nor does it mean that every beat reporter with an internet connection suddenly because a quasi-expert like Kiper.

Second, did I mention it’s Grossi’s 7th (7th!) iteration of a mock draft? That means that when he has a hole to fill in the PD’s ever shrinking sports section in the next several days, out will come mock drafts versions 8 and 9. Sooner or later he’s bound to get something right.

On the scale of problems plaguing just the sports world, the proliferation of meaningless NFL mock drafts ranks just below Gloria James’ temper. In other words, the fact that the PD uses such things as a proxy for real news or analysis is relatively harmless, at least in the short term.

But the problem is exactly that: the PD and newspapers like it use such things as a proxy for real news. They are cost conscious, like every employer these days, but they have completely abdicated any responsibility for covering the real stories of the NFL to those on the national scene that apparently do it better in favor of having their local hack twiddle his thumbs, read a few magazines, and draw up mock drafts.

Maybe it doesn't occur to those running the PD and other newspapers why they continue to fall short in the public's imagination, but perhaps it has something to do with no longer being an outlet for actual sports news, at least the kind of actual sports news that's been ferreted out organically.

Reporters like Grossi can only give the newspaper what they’re willing to pay for and at this juncture it looks like they aren’t willing to pay for much, so in some sense he may not be at fault. But in other ways, he and his ilk are part of the problem because they shy away from the more complex in favor of the inane. Just because his employers are tight with a buck isn't an excuse for being tight with one's own creativity.

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Speaking of the media, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban took to his blog (blogmarverick.com) recently to advocate for a new world order when it comes to media access to his and other teams. He won't get away with it in the short term, but the object of his ire are internet reporters who get bonuses from their employers based on page views for their stories. In a completely related development, USA Today announced this past week that it will start paying its reporters those bonuses.

Cuban's point is that at this juncture the electronic media in particular has taken on a paparazzi-like persona. No longer satisfied to ask the usual boring questions to athletes who give the same boring answers to questions like “how do you feel about losing this game?”, these reporters, Cuban claims, lie in wait in the locker room hoping to get a player in a vulnerable moment and then ask an embarrassing question or respond to a rumor. The intent is to get the player to adversely react, make that the story, throw it up on a web site immediately and bang the page views on the internet site increase exponentially. Advertisers pay based on page views, so it all makes sense.

I have no doubt that this kind of thing happens all the time. And while Cuban, an early adopter of almost any technology, rightly sees the trend that's developing, his inability to put it into historical perspective is clouding his judgment.

Any form of paid media, whether it's newspapers, television stations, radios or internet sites, needs readers to survive. The good outlets try to gain an economic advantage by employing good journalists. Others try to gain their advantage by employing the outrageous. Al Gore and the internet certainly didn't invent that or their employers' compensation systems.

Cuban's solution is to keep all of the local media around and limit or deny access to those purely internet reporters who are incented toward the outrageous in order to enhance page views and get their bonuses. What Cuban fails to understand is that the local media is similarly incented. The local print reporters see their material land on their newspapers' internet sites where the value of their work is likewise judged by page views. Same for local television reporters.

Cuban's barely disguised motive is to limit access to his team, theorizing that the team and each player has access to things like Twitter and Facebook and thus can get their own story out without the need for reporters. That's true in the same way the government has access to the same outlets and likewise could make the case that it could more easy get out its message without interference from the press.

But limiting access is never the answer. There are always stories to be told and leads to pursue and if a few obnoxious jerks posing as reporters make players, coaches and management a little uncomfortable at times, well that's the price to be paid for a free society.

**
The sad end to the transcendent career of Manny Ramirez is now at hand and while he was one of the best pure hitters in the game, his legacy will be that of a drug-using enigma.

It's really not a surprise that Ramirez would have violated baseball's drug policy again because Ramirez has proven several times over that he doesn't even have the sense that God gave a light bulb. I have this image of some shady drug dealing “trainer” telling Ramirez that he won't get caught and Ramirez swallowing that line like a dog swallows kibble, three times over.

What's so disappointing though is that Ramirez at some point several years ago reached the conclusion that he couldn't survive on his natural hitting skills any longer and that he needed artificial enhancements to stay in the game. That's simply a thought process I'll never understand.

I know that Ramirez is a fool whose deepest thought may be whether to get the steak or the salmon at dinner but his case still stands for the proposition of why steroids and other performance enhancing drugs remain part of the national conversation.

To watch Ramirez in his youth take the sweetest swing in the major leagues and consistently hit for average and power was a sight to behold. To watch Ramirez in his later years stroll through baseball as a clueless beach bum with a swing long since unhinged from its moorings was pathetic. If nothing else, it was the drugs more than age that took its toll on Ramirez and probably far sooner than it should have.

It's hard to know exactly why Ramirez, in his mid to late 30s, turned to steroids to get himself back on track. The chance of him talking about it publicly is nil. And though he did get caught, three times, I suspect that he'll still serve as a role model for every other player looking to get an edge. They'll surmise that all they need to do differently is be more careful than Ramirez. And given how Ramirez carries himself, there isn't a person alive who doesn't think he could be more careful or clever than Ramirez.

I have no idea whether Ramirez will ever get to the Hall of Fame, I just know he shouldn't. He certainly has the numbers. But when his name comes up for the first time on a Hall of Fame ballot 5 years from now, he'll be just as radioactive as Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire and will deserve to be. There's just no way of knowing how much of Ramirez's career accomplishments were the result of the artificial enhancements he used. Since that will never change, here's hoping that he never does garner enough support for election to the Hall of Fame and that in time he just becomes another footnote, a once potentially great player who threw it all away.

Lingering Items--Penthouse and Outhouse Edition

Watching LeBron James against the Atlanta Hawks on Thursday night reminded me of the statement Bobby Jones once made about Jack Nicklaus, “he plays a game with which I’m not familiar.” Jones’ regarded in his prime as one of the game’s greatest players, could only marvel at Nicklaus. In heaping one of the greatest accolades one superstar could ever bestow on another, Jones’ point was that as good as he was Nicklaus was playing the game at an all together different level than any one else.on the planet.

That’s exactly where James is at the moment. The NBA is filled with great talents. But James is different. He steps on the court and the opposing players already know they’re beat. He’s Tiger Woods winning the U.S. Open by 10 strokes. Everyone else is playing for second place.

At this point there simply are not enough superlatives to describe his play. String together a dozen or so of your favorite adjectives and you still can’t adequately describe his artistry and athleticism. It goes beyond his physical gifts. Like Tiger Woods and Nicklaus before him, James is mentally stronger than anyone else on the court. He knows what the opposition is thinking even before they do and they know it. They also know they can’t contain him let alone stop him. If you’re going to beat the Cavs, the focus has to be on stopping everyone else.

The question I keep asking myself is whether or not Cleveland fans fully comprehend the player that in their midst is the game’s greatest player playing at his best. It’s a difficult concept to grasp, especially in a town like this. The closest Cleveland fans have come to a similar circumstance is when Jim Brown played for the Browns. But he retired 45 years ago. Those memories have more than faded. Cleveland teams have had their share of great players since but only in that rare case have they had the game’s best player in his prime.

James being named MVP recently is just a public confirmation of his current status to the outside world. But as is typical those kinds of awards sometimes trail the actual accomplishments. Just like Woods chasing down Nicklaus’ legacy, the focus on James now is on when, not if, he’ll chase down Michael Jordan’s legacy. Like Woods, James is off to a great start.

If all of this doesn’t translate into a NBA championship this season for the Cavs, that will be a major disappointment. But it won’t diminish what James already has accomplished nor will it impede all that’s left for him to do. James will win a championship, probably several. The chosen ones always do.

**
The Cleveland Indians have barely made it through the first week of May and already they’ve had two significant makeovers. Whether that is just general manager Mark Shapiro being proactive or whether he’s panicking almost doesn’t matter. What does is that the Indians team he put together in the lab this past winter isn’t gelling as hoped. And if this latest concoction fares no better it will reverberate long after this season is in the books.

In the offseason, Shapiro said that he had learned some lessons from the previous seasons by acknowledging that his lack of action in the past hurt the Tribe just when it seemed on the cusp of being a real contender. By essentially overestimating the potential of those teams he more or less stood pat in the offseason (last year is a nice example) and assumed that another year of growth by the current crop was all that was needed to move to the next level.

Nice theory. Next.

Though the Indians were at times downright miserable to watch last season, there was growth in the second half that justifiably offered some optimism. That’s the reason that Shapiro allegedly went over budget to fortify the bullpen and the bench, the two areas more than any other that cost the team last year. The early returns haven’t been promising.

Given where this team stands, the question all this naturally begs is whether Shapiro just doesn’t have what it takes to be a successful general manager. One year he stands pat and gets burned. The next he spends more money than seems prudent given the economy and still gets burned. If it’s not incompetence then maybe it’s just bad luck.

Shapiro certainly has his shortcomings. He’s arrogant to a fault. He overemphasizes small gains and minimizes setbacks. He often buries himself in too much research instead of trusting what he actually sees on the field. But for all that, Shapiro is not a bad general manager, not by any reasonable measure anyway.

What fans often forget is how difficult it is to be a general manager in this market in this sport. Baseball doesn’t do its business any favors by letting certain teams run amok financially as others struggle. It also doesn’t help that the business is entrusted to the absolute worst commissioner in the history of organized sports. So powerless is Bud Selig to bring the gravitas of his position down around its stakeholders to goad them into making the fundamental changes necessary to survive and thrive that the sport would be better off if it simply abolished his office and sent him back to Milwaukee.

In other words, even before the first personnel decision gets made in Cleveland, Shapiro or whoever is in that position, is essentially coming to the plate with a 0-2 count. The next factor is the Indians ownership. Whatever their financial wherewithal might be, one thing is crystal clear: the Dolans will not dip into their personal fortunes to run this team. It rises and falls on its various revenues.

That’s not a criticism. The Dolans are prudent businessmen in that sense. But owning a professional sports franchise is sometimes about more than just being prudent. There has to be a little flair to it. You have to take some risks. That’s where the Dolans have always fallen short.

Some would argue, correctly, that the Indians’ current payroll is a risk because there simply is no way that the revenue expected to be generated out of the local economy this year will ever be sufficient to support that payroll. This is true, but payroll isn’t a static concept. If the Indians don’t generate some wins and put themselves into contention in the next 30-45 days, they’ll have no hope of reaching their projected attendance level. That means come July they’ll be cutting payroll faster than General Motors. Count on it.

With all of these obstacles in front of him, it’s a wonder Shapiro can find a way to do much of anything each offseason, at least when it comes to making a meaningful impact. The budget constraints Shapiro faces each season aren’t theoretical. They lead him or whoever sits in that chair to a player acquisition strategy that relies heavily on trying to pick the pockets of other teams’ general managers through trades and trying to find “value” players from the league’s free agent bargain bin. It’s hit or miss and always will be.

Shapiro can talk all he wants about fielding a competitive team each season and he most certainly means it. The reality is that it’s simply not possible. Even when the Indians have good young players, Shapiro can’t make long-term plans because he knows that sooner rather than later their talent will exceed the Indians’ ability to pay them.

It’s frustrating that the Indians aren’t better. It’s frustrating that there aren’t any leaders on this team. And while some of this is clearly Shapiro’s fault given that he is the one making the personnel decisions, it’s also the inevitable outgrowth of a financially constrained team in an economically constrained town playing in a fiscally unmanaged sport.

**

The news that L.A. Dodgers outfielder Manny Ramirez tested positive for a banned substance and now finds himself nearly $7 million poorer and sitting out almost a third of the season was just another reminder of how illegal drugs continue to haunt the game of baseball.

This news came on the heels of a recent roundtable Selig and the commissioners of the other major professional sports had with the Wall Street Journal. Selig, by this point so used to the question that he now answers it in rote terms, was asked about steroid use in baseball. Doing his earnest best he said it wasn’t that he didn’t want to know or that he was in denial for all those years, he just didn’t know. He then broadened the answer to wistfully remind people how easy it is to look back 10 or 15 years later on almost anything and say “you should have known.”

Well, neither the Ramirez issue nor the steroid use of Alex Rodriguez were 10 or 15 years ago but of far more recent vintage, so the usual Bud-speak once again doesn’t withstand even surface level scrutiny. All these issues do is remind everyone how Selig and the union under Donald Fehr have essentially conspired to ruin the sport.

Selig’s oft-repeated mantra that he didn’t know is starting to wear awfully thin as the superstars of the sport continue to crumble around him. Selig’s one true talent is his abject ability to convince himself of anything, reality notwithstanding. Baseball is literally riddled with cheaters and has been for years and Selig can’t discern a pattern?

Meanwhile, every time a story like that of Ramirez comes out Fehr goes into full Dick Cheney mode and hides in a bunker until the initial smoke clears. Eventually he comes out to mutter his oft-repeated mantra about how the union doesn’t condone the use of banned substances and how his group and the owners have worked together to create a strong anti-drug program.

The difference between Selig and Fehr, though, is that Fehr is hardly in denial. He knows that the drug program is a joke and simply doesn’t care. His attitude is and always has been one of allowing the players to get away with almost anything if it raises their salaries. He cares about the good of the game about as much as the Octomom cares about bad publicity.

As for Ramirez, he is now and forevermore branded as a cheater and deservedly so. He was a certain Hall of Famer until this. He may still get there but there always will be a question of the legitimacy of his statistics, just likethose of Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire. This situation isn’t just another episode in the long running series “Manny being Manny.” It is another episode in the equally long but even more sad series “Cheaters Like Us.”

Ramirez’s official press release reads like something crafted by call center workers in Sri Lanka but makes far less sense. It’s possible that Ramirez really wasn’t trying to mask steroid use but that his doctor prescribed a female fertility drug for him because he was having trouble ovulating. I’d hate to think that Ramirez was really a male impersonator all these years, but then again has anyone actually ever seen him naked?

The most telling aspect of Ramirez’s half-hearted apology is the simple fact that he isn’t appealing his suspension. That speaks volumes about his level of culpability. But then again maybe he’s learning the lessons from the well-worn paths of the other superstars before him. Admit and move on, like Andy Pettite, and you’ll get through it sooner. Protest too loudly, like Roger Clemens, and the story never ends.

When Ramirez had difficulty getting a long-term contract this past off season and the Dodgers were the only team bidding for his services, the economy looked like the culprit. Maybe Selig is so clueless that he couldn’t tell, but it certainly looks like a lot of general managers had an idea what was really up.

**

This week’s question to ponder is probably the same one Bud Selig is probably asking himself: Who is the next baseball superstar to be linked to steroids?

Sentimental Journey

Who knew that Manny Ramirez was such a sentimental fool? Or Jim Thome, for that matter? But fools they are just the same.

According to a report in Monday’s USA Today, Ramirez and Thome were talking recently and were getting positively misty-eyed about the possibility of eventually making their final curtain call as ballplayers with the team that nurtured them through thick and thin, like Broadway Danny Rose, only to see them eventually turn their backs on them when the light shined the brightest.

Ramirez and Thome were two key players most responsible for the resurgence of the Indians in the mid-1990s. What made them both so beloved is that they grew up in the Indians’ farm system and went on to establish their reputations with the Indians. Playing together from 1993-2000, collectively the two had 441 home runs and 1485 RBI. During that stretch, the Indians were 703-525 and were in the playoffs 6 times, going to two World Series. An impressive run even if it didn’t pay off in the ultimate prize.

But if the Cleveland fans benefited from this golden age, it’s not as if the two players didn’t realize there was something in it for them. While each professed their great appreciation for Cleveland, and still do, it was hardly enough to convince them to give Cleveland a hometown discount of sorts in order to ensure that each would be here for the remainder of their careers.

Maybe it’s awfully naïve anyway to think that a hometown discount was coming from either player or even that it should. What the average fan doesn’t appreciate is the enormous pressure that each player (and those similarly situated) is under from both their colleagues and the players union to get that last dollar, the hell with loyalty. It’s the essence of free agency and the Marvin Miller Doctrine: the high tide raises all ships.

If players like Thome or Ramirez turn down precedent setting deals then, the theory goes, the rest of the players suffer from depressed salaries as well. As an economic theory, it has some merit. Setting salaries is at its core an exercise of comparisons and the lower the top, the lower the middle and the lower the bottom.

But it’s just these kinds of economic theories that are the reason the sport is in such financial and competitive straits in the first place. I don’t need to rehash the same rant, but the truth is that only certain teams can afford to pay top dollar and Cleveland isn’t one of them. And when only certain teams can sustain certain payrolls, the health of the league suffers.

Ah, but the health of the league has never once been a concern for the players union, which is why that never factored into their coercion of Ramirez, Thome and others. It can be argued that when Miller was in charge, the league owners needed to be reigned in. Miller fought against the reserve clause because it basically treated players like indentured servants. In that sense, Miller’s moves were for the benefit of the league overall. Free agency, in and of itself, is probably better for a sports league than not.

But the overall good of the sport was hardly Miller’s chief concern. As he said on many occasions, he represented the players, not the league and not the fans. If in making things better for his clients it had the unintended consequence of also making things better for the sport and its fans that was just a happy coincidence. Miller could have cared less.

Donald Fehr and the rest of the power brokers at the players union are worthy heirs to Miller’s legacy. The next time they do something for the good of the league, let alone the fans, will be the first time. Thus, the fact that they pushed players like Ramirez and Thome to turn their backs on a mid-market team like Cleveland for the benefit of the players overall plays into this dynamic.

But that doesn’t mean that Ramirez and Thome had to act like lemmings at the behest of the union. There was a middle ground in each case that would have greatly enriched each of them millions of times over without having to turn their back on the Cleveland fans. It just doesn’t happen to be a route either chose. It’s understandable, certainly, and personally I don’t hold any animosity to either for choosing the path they did.

Having chosen that path, now’s not the time to express regrets, mild though they may be. Both seem to be looking back at their Cleveland years with the kind of twinkle of some Grandpa Jones rocking on the front porch telling stories about when he was young. If it doesn’t strike you as more of a backhanded compliment than anything else, your ability to be offended has been blunted by the years of abuse that comes with being an Indians fan.

What’s really happening in both cases is that Ramirez and Thome, like Ken Griffey, Jr., are nearing the end of stellar careers. With that they know the days of multi-year contracts at $15-20 million per season are a thing of the past. Ramirez, for all his accomplishments last season, struggled to get just a two-year deal out of the Dodgers. In doing so, he took less pay than he wanted but did get an opt-out clause after this year. More importantly, the Dodgers were the only bidders. That might be due to a massive miscalculation on the part of his agents, but it’s also due in no small part to his age, 37, and the state of the economy. Thome is in his final year of his contract that took him from Cleveland to Philadelphia and then to the White Sox. He may come across as a combination of Woody Boyd and Lil Abner, but even Thome can see what’s happened to Ramirez and the free agent market when it comes to aging veterans.

The sentimentality that makes them wistful for Cleveland will no doubt get some fans anxious for a return to those glory years. Who wouldn’t want to see Ramirez and that sweet swing back in Cleveland? Well, for one, me. I’ve long since come to grips with the reality that in order to maintain your sanity when it comes to sport, love the game not the players. Both will break your heart, but the players will do it deliberately. That’s the difference.

The other thing to remember in all of this is that the reason both can now talk openly about coming to Cleveland is that the union doesn’t much care about them anymore. With their prime earning years behind them, the union’s interest in maintaining salary integrity (a nice euphuism for pushing for exorbitant salaries) is significantly less. It’s a nice bit of freedom for Ramirez and Thome but it’s also a freedom that comes too late to really benefit Cleveland fans. I wanted Ramirez and Thome during their primes, not the ones playing out the string.

If you want to get sentimental about a player, what about Omar Vizquel? He left Cleveland because he was forced to. General manager Mark Shapiro had no interest in signing him to a 3-year deal like the San Francisco Giants did. Shapiro was thinking about the development of Peralta and his upside. It was an understandable business decision.

But Vizquel had two good years in San Francisco and a third when he was hurt. It’s what happens when you get older. But Vizquel is still viable in some role, which is why the Texas Rangers signed him to be a bench player and part time sensi to the younger players on the roster.

It’s interesting that only the Texas Rangers bothered to sign this future hall of famer. Maybe he doesn’t fit in with the Indians are currently constructed, but it’s hard for me to imagine the downside of him doing for Cleveland what he’s doing for Texas. Jhonny Peralta and Asdrubal Cabrera and a host of others at the major and minor league levels can do for a little Vizquel in their lives. Vizquel, come back anytime. Stay as long as you’d like.

As Thome said to the USA Today, baseball is a funny sport and anything can happen. Indeed, it’s as likely as not that either or both of Ramirez and Thome will make a final stand in Cleveland. And if they do, they’ll probably be warmly embraced, like a favorite son returning home. That may be a nice coda to their careers, but then again every Cleveland fan has a bit of battered spouse syndrome coursing in their veins. Just once it would be nice for the Cleveland fans to realize that they always deserved better than having to be constantly reminded of why their good players left in the first place.

More Than Just Manny Being Manny

It’s worth asking, even if the answer seems obvious: at what point will Manny Ramirez realize he finally stepped over the line? Undoubtedly there is considerable sentiment that Ramirez, like most other pampered and spoiled professional athletes, doesn’t even possess the gene necessary to express regret. And that may be true. But you have to think at some point on his trip across country to hook up with Casey Blake and the rest of the L.A. Dodgers that it had to flash at least momentarily in his mind that he may have pushed his clown act a tad to far.

Teams, particularly contending teams and particularly the defending World Series champs, don’t trade a current superstar and lock Hall of Famer in the middle of a pennant race without an awfully good reason. Yet it certainly seemed like the Boston Red Sox had good reason and more to send Ramirez as far away as geographically possible. Now he’s left with the realization, whether he owns up to it or not, that he carries a tarnished image to a city where image is everything.

Ramirez will always be seen as a somewhat beloved overgrown kid to Cleveland Indians fans. Like C.C. Sabathia, Ramirez grew up with the Indians. At every step of his development from the low minors to his pro debut to his last at bat with the Indians, Ramirez possessed one of the sweeter swings ever. He still does. As a neophyte major leaguer, his mostly harmless goofiness gave him the appeal of a Golden Retriever. The stories about a young Ramirez traipsing around like someone’s kid brother, absentmindedly leaving five-figure uncashed checks laying around in his car, bumming rides off of the clubhouse attendants, grabbing just about any bat in the rack at any moment, only made him endearing.

When Ramirez left Cleveland, he wasn’t excoriated by the fans the way Jim Thome was, even though he made the same unabashed money grab. Sure, there has been the occasional derogatory reference to him as Manny Dinero, but his returns to Cleveland have generated mostly a “wish he was still here” reaction whereas with Thome fans still boo him and consider him to be a traitor.

All of that may be due to the fact that Thome was far more forthcoming and articulate with the media, which ended up costing him dearly with the public. His claims of wanting to remain in Cleveland ultimately rang hollow. Ramirez in contrast never said much of anything to anyone. At the time, he simply let his agent, Jeff Moorad, manipulate the local media as he angled for the best deal for his client. It probably wasn’t a calculated move on Ramirez’s part so much as it was just another example of his seemingly casual indifference toward his career which to most seemed to consist of the beautiful simplicity of “see ball, hit ball, occasionally cash a check.”

To this day, any fan who says he really knows much about Ramirez is basing it more on hearsay than firsthand experience. At least until recently.

One of the strangest interviews that Ramirez has ever given (and he rarely gives them) was to ESPNdeportes.com earlier this week. In that interview he uttered his famous “the Red Sox don’t deserve a player like me” line, a quote that will certainly redefine him going forward at least as much as his “aw shucks” persona has defined him in the past. In full measure, the bomb he dropped was audacious in its scope: “During my years here, I've seen how they [the Red Sox] have mistreated other great players when they didn't want them to try to turn the fans against them. The Red Sox did the same with guys like Nomar Garciaparra and Pedro Martinez, and now they do the same with me. Their goal is to paint me as the bad guy. I love Boston fans, but the Red Sox don't deserve me. I'm not talking about money. Mental peace has no price, and I don't have peace here.”
It would easy to pick nits with Ramirez’s revisionist history. No question, though, that the Red Sox have an ignominious history when it comes to the way they’ve treated certain superstars, dating back to Babe Ruth. Still, it will be fascinating to see where Ramirez finds his “mental peace” next season and at what price. Having spectacularly eliminated a club with one of the highest payrolls in the league from the mix, this latest episode won’t help Ramirez maximize his value no matter how the rest of the season turns out.

The Red Sox may be employing the old “addition by subtraction” spin to this mess, but there really are no winners in this situation. The Red Sox can talk about the new calm and the “team first” attitude that has re-emerged in the clubhouse. And certainly Jason Bay is a decent consolation prize. But the Red Sox are not a better team today than they were with Ramirez no matter how it’s spun. Ramirez may feel like he pushed the Red Sox around pretty good and let them know that he won’t be trifled with, but it comes at a permanent cost to his reputation. The ESPNdeportes quote and his tired antics—the mysterious refusals to play, the half-hearted runs to first base—will linger. The Dodgers, too, aren’t going to come out of this unscathed. Ramirez brings baggage and unneeded attention for a team just trying to get in the playoffs. And the scruffy, unkempt Ramirez will, at some point, clash with Joe Torre, as old school of a manager as there is in the game.

The Ramirez situation provides some interesting parallels with the melodrama playing out in Green Bay with Brett Favre and the Packers. On the surface, there are similarities given the players involved. But one of the key differences is that Favre is unquestionably at the end of his career, Ramirez is not. However the Favre situation resolves, it won’t last more than another season or so. Ramirez is going to be around for awhile. Though 36, Ramirez has plenty left in the tank. And as long as the American League keeps the designated hitter, with that swing Ramirez can probably hit .280 and drive in 80-90 runs a game until he’s 50.

But whether he gets that chance depends on whether Ramirez returns to his more carefree ways or becomes permanently enamored with his new-found verbosity. Most any team can tolerate the old Manny being Manny. It’s the new Manny being Manny that will wear thin long before his considerable skills finally abandon him.