A New Take on Manny being Manny

I had the privilege of watching the Indians and Red Sox Tuesday night at the Jake. I will never call it "Progressive Field". I had excellent seats on the 3rd baseline right next to the foul pole. I never intended to do much except visit with my brother - in - law and eat as many hot dogs as I could since it was "dollar dog" night. I ate six with no problem, but the other two were frozen by the time I was done with the first six. Yes! It was cold!
The first couple of innings I was intrigued with watching Manny Ramirez. Our seats were only about 20 yards away from him. He would take his glove off and play with it, or hold it with his right hand. He would pull out a bag of seeds and fill his mouth. While he is doing all of this, the game was in motion. The pitcher was in his wind-up and so on. I always believed that Manny was a terrible, lazy fielder, but even though it seemed like he could care less what was going on, he never missed a play. He made everything look so easy from fielding ground balls, to catching hard shots into the gap. His cut-off throws and one throw directly to 2ND base were precisely accurate and effortless.
The game got into the later innings and Manny would look around and smile, watch the scoreboard. A few fans dropped their signs over the wall and Manny walked over and picked them up and threw them back to the fans. Ryan Garko was injured and most players were chatting with each other, but Manny was down on one knee and clapped as Garko made his way to first.
He was constantly heckled throughout the game and never acknowledged anyone, but would occasionally smile and look at some fans. At one point during the 9Th inning, I leaned over as he went to retrieve the ball that got away from him while they were warming up and said, "Manny, I respect your game and the way you just have fun." He looked up and pounded his fist against his heart and pointed at me.
It was great to see a superstar playing and just having a lot of fun. That is Manny being Manny!!!

Big Pappy, David Ortiz Jersey burried at new Yankee Stadium

I had to post this story. www.cbssportsline.com
Red Sox jersey removed from new Yankee Stadium, will go to charity
April 13, 2008
CBSSports.com wire reports
A construction worker's bid to curse the New York Yankees by planting a Boston Red Sox jersey in their new stadium was foiled Sunday when the home team removed the offending shirt from its burial spot.
After locating the shirt in a service corridor behind what will be a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium, construction workers jackhammered through the concrete Sunday and pulled it out.
The team said it learned that a Sox-rooting construction worker had buried a shirt in the new Bronx stadium, which will open next year across the street from the current ballpark, from a report in the New York Post on Friday.
Yankees president Randy Levine said team officials at first considered leaving the shirt where it was.
"The first thought was, you know, it's never a good thing to be buried in cement when you're in New York," Levine said. "But then we decided, why reward somebody who had really bad motives and was trying to do a really bad thing?"
On Saturday, construction workers who remembered the employee, Gino Castignoli, phoned in tips about the shirt's location.
"We had anonymous people come tell us where it was, and we were able to find it," said Frank Gramarossa, a project executive with Turner Construction, the general contractor on the site.
The Yankees say they will send the tattered David Ortiz to a Boston charity to be auctioned off.
It took about five hours of drilling Saturday to locate the shirt under 2 feet of concrete, he said.
On Sunday, Levine and Yankees CEO Lonn Trost watched as Gramarossa and foreman Rich Corrado finished the job and pulled the shirt from the rubble.
In shreds from the jackhammers, the shirt still bore the letters "Red Sox" on the front. It was a David Ortiz jersey, No. 34.
Trost said the Yankees had discussed possible criminal charges against Castignoli with the district attorney's office.
"We will take appropriate action since fortunately we do know the name of the individual," he said.
A woman who answered the phone at Castignoli's home in the Bronx on Sunday said he was not there.
A spokesman for Bronx district attorney Robert Johnson said Sunday he did not know whether any criminal charges might apply.
Levine said the shirt would be cleaned up and sent to the Jimmy Fund, a charity affiliated with Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Along with that, New York will send a Yankees Universe T-shirt, which is sold to benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
"Hopefully the Jimmy Fund will auction it off and we'll take the act that was a very, very bad act and turn it into something beautiful," he said.