Manny Ramirez: “I thought Jason Bay was a, y'now, place” – AP

The Port of San Pedro, or as Manny Ramirez calls it, "Jason Bay"

Jason Bay just agreed a $66M contract for four years with the New York Mets, a deal which will be announced formerly sometime next week.

No one was more surprised to hear of this development than:

Manny Ramirez.

Sources within the Los Angeles Dodgers organization on Wednesday, December 30th report that Manny — as he is affectionately known by one and all — was shocked to learn of Bay’s deal.  According to these same team sources, Manny, who had just finished watching tape in the Dodgers’ training complex and was getting ready to hit the indoor cage, became “visibly agitated” when he heard of the trade deal.

After a few minutes of furiously pacing back and down the tunnel between the batting cage and a bank of vending machines, Manny would only say “this is too awful.  Very bad, man.  Bad.  I tell you, this is bad.”  Reportedly, Manny then borrowed $.75 from a training aide, bought a Fresca and “unburdened himself.”

Said the aide to our key source:

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“Manny was despondent, really.  We had no idea.  I mean, nobody had any idea, but evidently, Manny thought that the Red Sox had traded him to the Dodgers back in ‘08 for an entire geological feature.  According to Manny, Scott Boras told him that ‘Jason Bay’ was a port of call down by San Pedro which we [Los Angeles] had agreed to swap to Boston in return for his services.

“Honestly, Manny thought that the Red Sox had paid him the biggest compliment ever paid to a professional athlete.  Now imagine how he felt when he found out that he had been swapped for a nice-guy slugger from Canada — with a slider-sized whole in his swing — who played for, gulp, Pittsburgh.”

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Added the trainer:

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“And please, please don’t let Manny know that the Sox have been in the playoffs the last two years without him.  No one has the heart to tell him that they were a 3-1 game 7 away from a date with Philadelphia in the 2008 World Series.  It would crush him.

“He doesn’t even know he was suspended for 50 games last year.  We just told him that the rest of the whole team had voted to work from home for a month and a half.”

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