Alas, Baseball!

The rain has subsided and the Red Sox are playing. It's time to stop watching the Great Turtle Race. (Yes, there is a turtle race being tracked on the web.)

Check out Ben McGrath's profile of Manny Ramirez which appears in the latest issue of the New Yorker. It's a long-winded piece (7 pages) and for those of us who read the Boston Globe sports section on a daily basis, it doesn't offer a ton of additional insight into Manny's elusive personality, but there are some interesting tidbits:

• David Ortiz says: "Manny is a crazy motherfucker. That guy, he’s in his own world, on his own planet. Totally different human being than everyone else."

• "Ramirez chose to name both of his first two sons Manny, Jr."

• As a youth, Manny left his Washington Heights apartment every morning at five-thirty, to run up Snake Hill "with a rope tied around his waist attached to a spare tire that dragged on the pavement behind him."

• In Cleveland, "Ramirez raided his teammates’ lockers, borrowing their bats and clothes—even their underwear—for luck. The baggy-uniform look, now popular across the league, can be traced to his swiping the pants of Dan Williams, a bullpen catcher in Cleveland, who outweighed him by at least fifty pounds."

• Manny "once requested a trade to Pawtucket."

• Manny watches the History Channel.
  

• Manny likes to travel "just to learn about different cultures." At the top of his list of places to visit is the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Hat tip to Baseball Musings for the link to "Waiting for Manny by Ben McGrath."
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