I was late to blog about this, but I haven’t seen much reaction online to this T.J. Simers article in the Los Angeles Times about Boston Red Sox fans’ continued reaction to Manny Ramirez, who is now happily ensconced here in (as they like to call us) “La La Land.”

And here’s the thing: He’s absolutely right. 

Manny’s biggest complaint about his time in Boston was that the fans were suffocating him.  They were relentless. They obsessed over his every move; wouldn’t leave him alone.  And their continued obsession seems to suggest that he likely wasn’t very far off-base.  They continue to monitor his every move.  An injury to Manny is, to hear them tell it, a good thing for Boston sports.

Here, Manny is a baseball celebrity.  That doesn’t rank terribly high on the list of Los Angeles must-stalks.  We spend our days on the 405 hoping to high hell Lindsay Lohan doesn’t come along and drunk-drive us off the road.  By the time we get to worrying about Manny’s hair or a sore hamstring in Spring Training for a guy who’s only been on the team for a short while, we’re exhausted and it’s time to close the newspaper.

It doesn’t help that their closer, Jonathan Rocker Papelbon, has an interview in Esquire magazine in which he still obsesses, saying that Manny was a “cancer” in Boston.  More recently, Johnny P told a Boston newspaper that “It takes 25 guys on a team to win, not 24, and that was blatantly
obvious… if you’re not in that
same cubbyhole with the rest of the guys going to war with you, you’re
all going to die. That almost happened.”

Thanks for those insightful words of wisdom, Kellen Winslow. 

He would also have you believe that Jason Bay (affectionately dubbed “Johnny Ballgame” by the kind-hearted Papelbon) is an upgrade to Ramirez.  He’s not.  Similarity scores show that the batters closest to Bay at his age are Geoff Jenkins and Ryan Klesko.  Solid contributors; not Hall of Fame candidates.  Closest to Manny?  Ken Griffey, Jr., Jimmy Foxx, and Frank Robinson.

And even when he was twenty-nine, the player most similar to him at that point in his career was Duke Snider.

Jason Bay is good.  Jason Bay is no Manny.  And Jason Bay, the clean-nosed kid from British Columbia, is not a matinee idol.

Which I guess is why Bostonians must continue to rely on Manny Ramirez for their headlines.  With a rapidly-declining David Ortiz, a disaster-waiting-to-happen Papelbon, and the Canadian bore Jason Bay, they need to obsess on something.

It might as well be Los Angeles.  After all, we’re used to having our celebrities worshipped.