I got nothin'.

Look, I have an enormous piece of research, enough Data Tables to choke a horse, appearing later this very day. You expect TDIB as well?


Today, I just want to refer all of you to Ben McGrath's fascinating piece on Manny Ramirez in the New Yorker. This is long overdue - Ramirez is one of the greatest players of our time, and it's not as if his light has been hidden under a bushel. He was the World Series MVP when the Red Sox finally, finally won one. But who knows anything about him?

It's not like McGrath gets close - Ramirez comes across as an amiable enough fellow, but he's far too cagey and guarded to give away anything to a reporter. But there's lots of interest anyway.

For example. Ramirez was an impressionable young player on a team where the notorious Albert Belle was the Alpha Dog. What did Ramirez pick up from gentle Albert?

Something about hitting. Belle believed that the toughest pitch for a right-handed power hitter to deal with was a hard slider, down and away. Being Albert Belle, he set up a pitching machine to throw him hard sliders, down and away, for thirty minutes at a time. (That, by the way, is just so quintessentially Albert Belle - how many guys are there who can consistently hit that spot with a hard slider, anyway?) Ramirez adopted the same practise, and brought it with him from Cleveland to Boston. Although he now says he's giving it up - he's getting old, he says, and you really can't hit everything.

The ridiculous baggy uniform began when Ramirez stole the pants off a bullpen catcher who weighed at least fifty pounds more than Manny. Ramirez, apparently, is one of those guys who thinks nothing of taking other player's bats, gloves, spikes, uniforms.

This normally drives teammates absolutely berserk - Cliff Johnson of the Blue Jays used to do it, and it almost started several clubhouse fistfights. Ramirez' teammates don't seem to mind. Some of this may be the whole "it's just Manny being Manny" but I was strangely reminded of another odd genius - the great, doomed Charlie Parker.

Maybe you've seen "Bird," Clint Eastwood's film about Parker. That movie was a labour of love for Eastwood, who is a huge jazz buff. Like many such projects, in its determination to get the gist of the story right, it let a lot of the actual film-making slide. It's very long, and drags a fair bit. But the amazing Forrest Whitaker absolutely nailed something in his portrayal of the lead. Parker was a junkie almost all of his adult life. He was a drunk the rest of the time. He was a liar, he was a thief, he was a man who could not be counted on for anything. Anytime. Ever. But there was something about him, and it wasn't just his genius as a musician - something about him as a person that made people love him, and help him, and forgive him, and give him yet another chance. Whittaker managed to suggest how that happened somehow.

Anyway, obviously there's no way on earth Manny Ramirez could be as irritating and difficult as Charlie Parker. Not even close - he's just a guy who walks to a different drummer. (According to David Ortiz, Ramirez is one "crazy m*th*rf**k*r.... he's in his own world, on his own planet.") But still, Parker was what I was reminded of, if on a far lesser scale. There's something about Manny...

That, and the fact that he can hit a little.