Down the stretch the Boston Red Sox come as the exclusive negotiating period with free agent catcher Jason Varitek is about to come to a close. And of course there’s nothing new to report on that end.
David Ortiz made an appearance on WEEI yesterday to promote his charity golf tournament in the Dominican Republic and during that time he talked about many things including former outfielder Manny Ramirez.
“The Manny situation was a tough situation for the team, for us the teammates, for him as a player,” Ortiz said. “He was trying to get to be out, everybody knows, it’s not news, for the past few years and it was something that it was getting worse and worse and worse every year. Last year [in the beginning] was one of those years that he just chill out and went to his business and pull himself together, it was a lot of talking.
“I myself, pretty much every year, have to kind of deal with that because me and Manny, we’re pretty close, and it got to the point where I had to come down and talk to him because we were going through a good situation and you don’t want to put the situation in a [bad] spot, everything just goes down. We were playing good. We were a pretty good contender in the American League East, and you just don’t want to change the whole thing, just knowing that you are the cleanup hitter, the best hitter in the game, and people look at you like, ‘Well what’s going on with this guy?,’ so, it was a lot of talking pretty much I encouraged Manny to talk to the media, make you guys job easy and it’s because you guys are the ones to let people know what’s going on, what’s happening with us in the clubhouse and everything, and he definitely agreed with me and started pretty much talking to everybody. Getting along.
“Everything started one day that I told Manny, ‘Hey look, look at the numbers that you have put up your whole career, and you have never been able to win an MVP, there’s a reason why’. And the media is our family. The media, sometimes you gonna find one or two guys that they’re gonna screw things up, try to get people’s attention writing bad things, but not everybody’s the same way. You gotta understand that and you can blame everybody for somebody that just makes a mistake. It doesn’t work like that . . . pull yourself together and start getting connected with the media because that’s how you express your feelings and people get to know more and Manny’s good things, that people don’t know about Manny. And he agreed with me.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, it was something going down between the Red Sox and Manny Ramirez that I can never really break that down for you because there’s some personal reasons that he has with our owners and I never got to the bottom of it, and [he’s] got his feelings, you know, Manny was, he got to the point that he really wanted to get to play for someone else.
“I’ll tell you one thing, I’m the kind of guy that I look at the positive side of everything and Manny, I get to learn a lot of things from Manny. Manny’s one of the guys that worked hard every day to have some really good performances out there, and I never saw Manny not getting prepared to play. . . now he wasn’t happy here, everybody knows that. And when a relationship get to the point, you gotta make a move just like we did, and you go from there.”
The Boston Red Sox have spoken to Scott Boras about Derek Lowe. I just don’t see the Red Sox giving the money to him especially to be a No. 4 or 5 starter for the Red Sox. But who knows since we all know free agency can get kind of wacky at times.
The Red Sox and Lee County spent 3 hours yesterday hammering out the details of their new 30-year lease agreement.
