becoming manny ... the authorized biography of manny ramirez ... appeared in bookstores around new england on tuesday without much fanfare ... today the april issue of esquire magazine hit the newstands in boston and across new england ... "with fanfare" would be an understatement ... the latest edition of esquire includes a wonderfully written article by chris jones headlined "jonathan papelbon grinds his teeth" ... inside the article are some pretty frank comments from jonathan on last summer's departure of manny ramirez from boston ... paps comments are consistent with and pretty much confirm stories we have heard and read over the winter months ... manny was traded from boston because the situation in the red sox clubhouse had become "carl everett" toxic ... and manny's very teammates essentially "voted him off the island" ... papelbons spicy words about ramirez ...which were actually spoken when writer chris jones visited jonathan and ashley (and newborn baby daughter parker alice) in mid-january at their home in hattiesburg, mississippi ... read like this "the beautiful thing about our team is, we don’t let anybody get above the team. he wasn’t on the same train as the rest of us." (writer's note: here papelbon starts banging his kitchen table for emphasis, the punctuation marks in his sentences changing) "he was on a different train! and you saw what happened with that. WE GOT RIDOF HIM, and we moved on without him. that comes from the manager, and it comes from guys like jason varitek and tim wakefield and david ortiz. nobody is ever going to be allowed to do that. even a guy like me, just heading into my fourth year in the big leagues — if david ortiz gets a little, you know — i’ll tell him what’s up! i’m not afraid to do that. i’m not afraid to put him in his place, because i think everybody needs that. and if somebody does it to me, i understand that. i most certainly understand that. varitek tells me all the time, 'just shut up. do what you’re supposed to do.' so manny was tough for us. you have somebody like him, you know at any point in the ball game, he can dictate the outcome of the game. and for him not to be on the same page as the rest of the team was a killer, man! it just takes one guy to bring an entire team down, and that’s exactly what was happening. once we saw that, we weren’t afraid to get rid of him. it’s like cancer. that’s what he was. cancer. he had to go. it sucked, but that was the only scenario that was going to work. that was it for us. and after, you could feel it in the air in the clubhouse. we got jason bay — johnny ballgame, plays the game right, plays through broken knees, runs out every ground ball — and it was like a breath of fresh air, man! awesome! no question."
asked how he felt about the trade after it had finally happened ... jonathan had more for amalie"im not going to sugar-coat anything. it takes 25 guys on a team to win, not 24, and that was blatantly obvious," papelbon said today after the club's workout. "it doesn't matter who you are -- you could be babe ruth -- 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. it was bad enough to where we weren't winning games. we weren't doing our job. when it comes down to that, we've got to find a cure. jason bay was our cure. it's that simple. we've got a team with one guy, we're not winning games. he leaves, a new guy comes in, and then we start winning games. that's pretty much putting the writing on the wall, if you ask me."
apparently jonathan didnt limit today's afterthoughts to benjamin ... weei.com has the text of more questions/answers ... the questions this time come from ap's maureen mullen"i was excited because I knew [manny] didn't want to be there, i wasn't excited that he was leaving because I know how good of a player he can be when he wants to be a good player. if you don't want to be a good player, you're not going to be good. if you want to sit out games against certain pitchers or you want to sit out because you don't feel like [it] for whatever reason, I mean you've got guys like [dustin] pedroia that are playing with a broken wrist and guys like mikey [lowell] that are trying to make it through hips that need hip suregery. you've got [josh] beckett with a bad back, everybody in the bullpen that's picking up extra innings that's breaking down. all kind of extra stuff that we're pushing through. when 25 or so guys are pushing through and one guy is not, that creates a problem. a problem was created and we weren't winning games, so we had to do something. it is what it is. yeah, we lost a great player, but we started winning games. so what's more important?"
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