Results tagged “Manny Ramirez” from The Sports Desk

The Boston Globe's Tony Massarotti handicaps the Manny Ramirez Derby and says the Dodgers' chances of re-signing the left-fielder depends on what other clubs do. See what he means by clicking here.

USA Today columnist Christine Brennan says there's something wrong with the playoff format when the teams with the best records over a 162-game schedule (Angels, Cubs) are knocked out in best-of-five first-round series while the club with the 15th-best record (Dodgers) is four wins from the World Series. Chris says it would help if baseball went back to two divisions in each league, the top two teams from each division advancing.

One reason short series can produce odd results in baseball is things like we saw in the first half-inning of the Dodgers-Phillies series a few minutes ago. Manny Ramirez's RBI double stayed in Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia because it struck near the top of the 19-foot-tall wall and screen 409 feet from home plate and just to the left of dead-center field. It's a home run if it flies a bat-length to the right, where it would easily clear a 6-foot-high wall.

Random happenings like that are part of the game and ballpark architects' fetish for weird nooks and crannies, imitations of old parks in which odd dimensions often were dictated by available space. You hope the randomness evens out. But in a short series, you never know.

Further thought: It's not often that tiny Citizens Bank Park prevents a home run. I came across this quote from Atlanta pitcher John Smoltz about the way the Philly park was built: "I don't know if you can even call it a baseball field. Whatever dimensions they have posted, they aren't right. It's the worst decision ever made."

How to describe Manny Ramirez? There are lots of possibilities, and sportswriters had to choose after Ramirez was traded from the Red Sox to the Dodgers this afternoon. Here were the adjectives used in the first reference to Ramirez in the first dozen trade stories I read on-line ...