Manny feeling blue: The end of an era

I don't know about other companies in Boston, but if mine was the barometer of productivity for the city yesterday, millions of dollars in worker unproductivity were lost yesterday as we all monitored the ongoing Manny Ramirez saga.

It was one of those days where you had an open document on your computer - maybe a PowerPoint presentation, a prospectus, an advertisement, or something else to give the impression that you were doing work. You knew you weren't fooling anybody. You were on boston.com, ESPN.com, SI.com, or some other sports site, waiting with baited breath to see where our enigmatic slugger was headed.

Fifteen years from today, you're going to remember where you were when you heard. Me? I was on a bus, heading up to see the Lowell Spinners as part of my company's summer outing. I got a text message - Manny was going to the Dodgers, Jason Bay is headed to the Sox.

It was a strange feeling - we'd been through a lot with Manny. We won two World Series' with him as our left fielder. Sure, sometimes his antics were frustrating and harmful to the team, but until this year it was almost all harmless. In Boston, fans and media types have a tendency to blow things out of proportion. At any point during the day, you can turn on WEEI and find some overpaid fat cat talk show host yelling at a caller, read one of Dan Shaughnessy's 'what have you done for me lately' columns, or go to a blog like this one where we aspiring writers express our opinions about things we ultimately have no control over. No wonder so many players have trouble thriving in this environment.

What gets lost in all of this is that baseball is a kid's game. Some of my best memories are from those little league fields in town, when the school year was about to end and the summer was about to begin. Manny realized this - and for me, anyway, he made the game fun to watch because you knew he was having fun. It was his way of deflecting the enormous pressure we put on our superstars to perform, and while you may disagree with some of his methods, you can't deny the results. The man put up numbers.

I was on ESPN a few hours ago, and on the front page, there was Manny in a Dodgers uniform. In the days to follow, everyone with a forum to express their opinion will sound off on this trade. We'll analyze the motives, point fingers, and talk about the wake of destruction Manny left on his way out of town. It's not going to change a thing. Manny is gone, and we say goodbye to him with mixed emotions.

I can't shake the feeling that I'm writing an obituary for Manny's career in Boston. We had the privelege of watching one of the greatest players of our era for 8 years. He had his moments where he left us scratching our heads, but without him we'd still be hearing those dreadful '1918' chants.

Thanks for the memories, Manny.