Not sure how I missed Gerry Callahan’s column in Tuesday’s Boston Herald — possibly because I forgot to type “hate fuckery to the extreme” into a search engine.
Why couldn™t Manny just stay here and play here and be happy? Why was he so determined to flee our lyrical little baseball town and play somewhere else?
Well, if you really want to know why, I™ll tell you:
Because he hates you, that™s why.
He doesn™t hate the ballpark. He doesn™t hate his teammates or his manager or the owners or the clubhouse attendants or the guy inside The Wall who operates the scoreboard. He doesn™t hate the weather or the racial climate or the politics.
He doesn™t even hate the media, at least not the way, say, Carl Everett or Keith Foulke hated the media. He doesn™t read the papers or listen to the talk shows or even answer questions from the media, so how could their presence drive him out of the city?
No, the reason for his trade demand was, like the man himself, pretty simple. He just hates you, the paying customer and unwavering supporter of the Sox. He hates that you™re always there, always yelling and cheering and fawning all over him. He hates your very nature – your devotion, your intensity, your insatiable appetite for all things Red Sox. Hell, you could say he hates you for loving him so much.
And you know what™s really kind of pathetic? You just keep loving him anyway. You just keep forgiving his sins, laughing off his transgressions, and ignoring his long-standing desire to put you and the Red Sox in his rearview mirror.
Do you remember what Manny supposedly did inside The Wall during a game? Well, that™s what he™s doing on your head, and you act as if it™s a nice warm summer rain. It is a unique dynamic in this town – a guy who can lay down on his team time and again and still not fall out of favor with the supposedly tough sports fans.
Yeah, I can’t for the life of me figure what Manny Ramirez would find unappealing about working in an environment where a columnist/chat show host had such a personal stake in generating animosity against him.