The Evil Genius of Manny Ramirez

The best bad guys are the ones whose plans are realized or wreak a tremendous amount of mayhem in the process.

I mean, would Heath Ledger’s Joker be any good if his “Pencil Trick” had failed and a gangster shot him dead with the sharpened #2 still in his hands?

Or think about the Arabian swordsman who squared off with Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He could have been awesome, right? He owned the maniacal look, had sweet sword skills, and an awesome red sash accenting his black outfit. But Indy put aside the bullwhip and opted for the more decisive approach, the gunshot, which incidentally answered once and for all the age-old debate about gun vs. machete.

So when we examine Manny Ramirez, make no mistake that we are looking at an exceedingly malevolent force who has orchestrated a deception of Shakespearean proportions.

Perhaps you are blinded by his Marley-esque dreadlocks. Or it could be that you are still chuckling about his catch/high-five the outfield fan/miraculous double play from earlier in the season. But in doing so, you are overlooking a man who is about to complete the last stanza in a diabolical and melodramatic song.

With the help of Scott (The Stain) Boras, Manny (The Pain) Ramirez gave the worst acting job since Nicolas Cage in any movie starring Nicolas Cage through the efforts put forth in his last days in Boston...His cancerous behavior and (using Tim McCarver’s word) despicable actions forced the Red Sox to give him away to whomever would accept a left-fielder with Hall of Fame skills and Wall Street ethics.

For "The Stain" and "The Pain," this was the most difficult portion of their plan. Actually playing the game would be no problem, but to have landed in a situation where Ramirez had a viable shot to be on a playoff team was beyond masterful and evoked the nuanced manipulations of Ben Linus getting Jack to perform back surgery on Lost.

After arriving in Los Angeles, all he managed to do was hit 17 HRs, knock in 53 RBI, and bat .396...in 53 games! He saved his best work for the playoffs though, hitting four HRs and ending with a .520 average. Even Krang and Shredder wouldn’t dare try to perpetrate such a belligerent fraud on a scale like this.

All that remains for the machinations of the master plan to be come together is for a desperate owner to gloriously overpay for Ramirez’s services (should the Dodgers pass on Ramirez’s option), which has always been a foregone conclusion.

As a scorned Sox fan, what can I do? I feel like a mortally wounded Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, screaming “A plague o’ both your houses!” to Ramirez and whomever rewards his villainy, as I swear to loathe the team that awards his shady tactics. Regardless of where he ends up, I hold out hope that some kind of justice will be meted out to him.

I wonder how lice respond to dreadlocks?