Manny Being Manny

If once a year, let’s say your company’s second quarter of their fiscal year, all of the hallway conversation, and the company newsletter, and the folks your saw every day in their normal commute, spoke of nothing but the possibility that your company’s executive board was thinking about firing you, what would you do? If every day you went to work you did the best job you could, and you were bringing in more money than anyone else in all of sales, and if in the process of doing that job you occasionally were heard saying something that was then taking out of context, or seen doing your job and perceived to be doing it in an unorthodox manner, even though you were the best sales person they had, and people around the office starting saying well that’s just “Sue being Sue,” or that’s just “Joe being Joe,” what would you do?

Have you ever seen the movie “Falling Down” with Michael Douglas as a very “normal” every day guy who just happens to kill a whole bunch of people because he has had enough of whatever people are saying and whatever they are doing. That movie is what I believe most people would do if faced with what I described in the first paragraph, maybe not in year one, or two, or three, but what about year even? Now imaging that it is your summer softball league, or lacrosse league, or your men’s hockey league, or your lunchtime hoops during the week, and your pals that you have been playing with year in and year out, summer after summer, are always talking about maybe you should play for a different club because if you do maybe they could replace you with someone better, easier to get along with, more “normal.”

My personal opinion is that most people faced with any sort of issues like this would not even have the strength to act out, they would go straight home, open beer one of many, Bud, or make martini one of many, or just go straight for the pint of Ben and Jerry’s. In know that if as you left work every day, or the field, or the court, hundreds of moronic reporters were asking you if it were true, or how you felt, or “why did the copier jam before you had all you needed for that sales proposal,” that you would run the other way in tears, that’s all of you, men and women.

Manny being Manny is something the press came up with. There are baseball players that actually just like playing the game, and Manny, in my estimation, is one of them. He is a kid at the ballpark playing a game, and he just happens to do it better than most, but he would much rather just play than have to live up to Manny being Manny because no one ever could. The press created it, and even they couldn’t define it if being pressed to do so, so how is Manny supposed to live up to it.

I think it is great that the LA area and the Dodgers’ fan, team, management, have accepted Manny Ramirez as he is and appreciated him for it. It is unfortunate that the Boston area and the Boston fans, team, management could not have done so. But then they started this crazy thing called getting rid of talent way back when, what was his name…oh yah, Babe Ruth, and then Pudge and Mo, and Nomar, and Derick Lowe, Rodger, Johnny, Pedro…the list is too long. Most, if not all, had more to offer and none were treated well on the way out. Man would I love to see Sox – Dodgers in the series…I know who I would root for…

Thank you again for getting this far with me.