Sunday, February 24, 2002

Harper has a point

I'm more and more falling into the roll of apologist for Manny Ramirez, but I can't help it. I like the guy and I think he got unfairly chastised at times last season and so far this season.

Red Sox coach Tommy Harper offers an alternative view to the "Manny hates Boston" theme promulgated at times by the Fourth Estate:

. . . it's really not fair, Harper said, to fault Ramirez for longing for Cleveland.

''That's human nature,'' Harper said, ''regardless of the $160 million. A lot of times, people have second thoughts. You can go in the store and buy a shirt and pair of pants and you get home and say, ''I'm not so sure about this. It looked good in the store.' You're tempted to take them back and exchange them.

''But that doesn't make it that he hates Boston. That doesn't mean he wants to get out of Boston. People will say, `Well, you had the option of staying. No one forced you to come to Boston.' But that doesn't keep the player from having second thoughts about his friends that he left. When we change residences or change jobs, don't we look back and say, `I miss so-and-so, I miss the surroundings, but I had to move on because I got a better offer'? (Edes, The Boston Globe).

If you've ever had to move because of work, you know how true this is. I left New England for grad school in Mississippi, and despite the move being overwhelmingly positive for me, I still missed home. Recently I left Texas to take a job in Virginia, a much better job financially and otherwise, but as you know if you're a frequent reader of this site, I still bitch and moan about missing Texas.

As Harper says, it's human nature.

Well, we're all in the mood for a melody

Last year we had the guy burning a Yankees cap on Mt. Everest in an effort to break the Curse.

This year we've got something just as good:

On Saturday, a group went to the bottom of a suburban Boston pond in search of Babe Ruth's piano, which, the story goes, was tossed into the water by the slugger in 1918.

``Once we bring this up, the Red Sox will win,'' Sudbury historian Lee Swanson said (Ken Macguire, AP, Yahoo News).

Hey, it's worth a shot. Acknowledgment of the Curse is the first step toward recovery. (Hat tip to Lawrence for the link.)

La la la, de de da . . .