More thoughts on Manny Ramirez

First, an acknowledgement of error: I messed up in the print column. (The linked version fixes the error.)

Portrait of the athlete as a young Manny:
The pre-dreadlocked Ramirez in his days
with the Cleveland Indians early in his career.

I had the notion of stringing together a lineup of no-doubt-about-it Hall of Famers who didn't have, combined, as many World Series titles as Manny Ramirez.

The list we printed was Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, Carl Yastrzremski, Rod Carew, Ernie Banks, Robin Yount, Pie Traynor and Gabby Hartnett. But Mays won a World Series in 1954, Aaron one in 1957, and Traynor in 1925. That's three, which is one more than Ramirez.

Traynor was pure oversight on my part — I somehow forgot that his career began that early. (That kind of thing may not be general knowledge, but it's something I expect myself to know without resort to reference books.) At one point in the writing process I replaced Aaron with Ty Cobb, who has zero. That, in my mind, brought the total to one (not really), and I made the sentence say that Manny had more titles to his credit than this group of illustrious players — and then, unaccountably, I dropped Cobb and restored Aaron to the list without further change.

I realized the Aaron error shortly after the press run, and we changed the on-line version to say the group had as many World Series wins as Ramirez, which still wasn't correct. I didn't think of Traynor's title until I started composing this post. (The linked version now replaces Aaron with Cobb and says the group won as many World Series as Ramirez, which is, finally, correct.)

Confused yet?

It wasn't all that good an idea to start with — this isn't basketball. No one player matters so much in MLB as in the NBA. Nobody thinks less of Banks (or Cobb or Ken Griffey Jr.) for the lack of a championship.

The larger point stands: Manny Ramirez's teams won a lot of games.

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I want, also, to take note of the incredible lineup the Cleveland Indians assembled in the mid 1990s:

Kenny Lofton, CF
Omar Vizquel, SS
Carlos Baerga, 2B
Albert Belle, LF
Eddie Murray, DH
Paul Sorrento, 1B
Jim Thome, 3B
Manny Ramirez, RF
Sandy Alomar Jr. C

Murray's in the Hall of Fame. Vizquel and Thome are still active (and Ramirez, of course, was until Friday); those three have HoF credentials. So does Lofton, who is not yet eligible but is the kind of player the voters have historically been unkind to (as Tim Raines can attest, leadoff men are almost always overlooked). Belle and Baerga had short careers, but at their peak were legitimate middle-of-the-order threats.

Any lineup deep enough to have Thome and Ramirez — even the young versions of those two — hitting seven and eight is historically good.

It's probably not as good as the Big Red Machine's starting eight; those Cincinnati teams of the mid '70s had Gold Gloves at each up-the-middle position, and Baerga fell short of that standard. Thome wasn't good enough at third to stay there long, and Ramirez was no Ken Griffey Sr. in right.

Impressive as that lineup is, they also discarded the likes of prospects Brian Giles, Richie Sexson and Sean Casey and couldn't find room for such pass-throughs as Jeff Kent and Jeromy Burnitz. That Indians organization was just loaded with position players. Pitchers, that was another story.

Notes, quotes and comment

For those readers who care about the Milwaukee Brewers — there are some — I offer this amusing link.

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Bob Feller (pictured above) is one of my favorite figures in baseball history -- a legendary fireballing pitcher and war hero, a man of blunt opinion who knows what he's accomplished, a man of standards not afraid to call out those he think has violated those standards. He is, I'm sure, as flawed as any other human, but ... well, our beagle is named Feller in his honor.

Rapid Robert, now 91, is fighting leukemia. The disease had better not dig in too deeply on him.

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Manny Ramirez is to join the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday, and he is expected to cut his dreadlocks in accordance with rules laid down by owner Jerry Reinsdorf.

Yeah. We'll see how that goes.

Here's Ozzie Guillen on Manny and the hair rule:

"If Jerry has any problem with his hair or the way he wears his uniform, they got to go directly to him. That's not my department. Guys can go out there buck naked, and if they win games for me, I'm happy."

Uh, don't give Ramirez any ideas.

Brian Fuentes, Manny Ramirez and waivers

Now that I've had a few hours to sleep on the Brian Fuentes trade, I realize that what makes the deal a surprise is that the lefty made it to the Twins on waivers.

For those unfamiliar with the waiver process: When Anaheim put him on waivers, the other 29 major league teams had something like 47 hours to claim him. Had nobody claimed him, the Angels had the right to trade him to any of the 29 teams. Claims go in reverse order of the standings, league first — in this case, all 13 other American League teams would have had to pass on him before a National League team could claim him.

The Twins are ahead of the Chicago White Sox in the standings; therefore, the Sox had an earlier shot at Fuentes. The Sox also have bullpen problems, with both J.J. Putz and Matt Thornton — their most useful relievers this season — on the disabled list. And, of course, they know that the Twins have injury problems in their bullpen, so claiming Fuentes would have at least blocked the Twins.

Heads they win, tails they win.

But they opted not to flip the coin.

I suspect they passed on Fuentes because of their Manny Ramirez maneuvering. The Sox are reported to have won the waiver rights to the slugger (meaning that the entire National League passed on him) and may fear that the Dodgers will simply dump the $4 million remainder of Man-Ram's contract on them. (As happened last August, when White Sox general manager Kenny Williams put in a claim on Alex Rios and was startled when the Blue Jays said "Great, you got him," and walked away rather than negotiating a trade and paying a chunk of Rio's salary.)

Claiming Ramirez isn't as risky as claiming Rios; Rios has years yet to run on his overpriced contract, Ramirez weeks. But Williams claims things are tight enough that he's checking the walk-up sales for each game to see how much he has available.

That may be posturing. It appears to be a complicated three-way negotiation, with Ramirez (and agent Scott Boras) wanting a contract extension in return for waiving his no-trade rights, the Dodgers and Sox dickering over prospects and who's paying off Manny, and the Dodgers (4.5 games out in the wild card race) weighing their own status (contender or pretender).

The Sox want Manny; they probably wanted Fuentes; they may not be able to afford both.

My guess is that they picked the wrong one to pursue.

Quotes, notes and comments

"He doesn't like water coolers, how's that? I could have told you that before he got here."

— Brewers manager Ken Macha on Cubs outfielder Milton Bradley. Macha managed Bradley in 2006 with the Oakland Athletics.

* There are several contenders for the title of "worst run major league franchise" — Pittsburgh hasn't sniffed .500 in almost a couple of decades, San Diego appears to be a ball of confusion, and the disgraced Jim Bowden left a mess in Washington.

Then there's Kansas City, which responded to a blogger's lengthy examination of the Royals' longtime trainer's role in the franchise's sorry injury history by declaring the blogger persona non grata. Or something. And then retracting it. Or something.

The blog in question, "Rany on the Royals," is included on my blogroll.

The posting that started the fun is here. Then we have Rany on his banishment here. Then, just to show that this got the attention of mainstream types, we have the Kansas City Star's Joe Posanski on the topic here. (Joe Po offers an exhaustive breakdown of the handling if Gil Meche (photo above) in Wedneday's game against the Twins.) And then we have Rany saying things are back to normal here.

The thing is: Rany Jazayerli is not only a Royals fan, he's the biggest optimist about the Royals you'll find anywhere on the Net. He's a very smart guy, but he really, truly believed the Royals would contend this year.

And to the dunderheads runing the operation, he's a problem.

* The Texas Rangers didn't make payroll. Or they did make payroll, but had to get a multi-million loan from the commissioner's office to do it. Or all the commish is doing is helping them find a new owner. Or something in between.

I'm confident of this: Had the players not been paid, there would be no question about that. Scott Boras has a few clients on that team. If Kevin Millwood misses a paycheck, Boras is going to be screaming from the mountaintops. If anybody didn't get their money, it's the small fry, the ticket sellers and the secretaries and the scouts.

Somewhere in the fog of obscurity is this rock of fact: Tom Hicks is in big financial trouble.

Big enough trouble that it makes everything else about the organization suspect.

*Manny Ramirez returns today from his steroid suspension, as popular as ever. Which just underlines the reality: Fans don't care if their guy is on the juice, they just don't want the other guys to be.