In another example of Manny Being Manny, former Boston Red Sox Star Manny Ramirez finally apologized in person for a 2008 incident in which he threw a much older Jack McCormick to the ground in a dispute over game tickets.
In 2008, Ramirez entered into an argument with Sox traveling secretary Jack McCormick over tickets to a game in Houston. The argument got so heated that Manny pushed the then 64-year-old McCormick to the clubhouse floor. Ramirez had never apologized in person to McCormick for the incident, which contributed the organization’s eagerness to ship their star player to the Dodgers in a three-team swap.
On Wednesday, Ramirez, for the first time since 2010, appeared at Fenway Park–where he threw out a first pitch cut off by Johnny Damon in a role reversal of an famous Manny-being-Manny moment–and at long last spoke directly to McCormick about the altercation.
“I went and spoke to Jack,” Ramirez said to reporters. “I apologized to Jack. I told him, ‘Jack, I want you to forgive me because it was my fault. I behaved bad here with everybody. I want you to forgive me.'”
Ramirez also reported that McCormick said, “Manny, thank you, I was waiting for that.”
Of course, Ramirez has a long history of bad behavior including two suspensions for using performance-enhancing drugs. He was even jailed briefly for a domestic incident with his wife in 2011. But he told reporters that he is turning over a new leaf.
“When I went to jail with that problem with my wife, they didn’t let me see my kids for two or three months,” Ramirez said, “and one day I woke up and looked at myself in the mirror and I said I needed a change. I started going to Bible studies, I saw it was good. God helped me to change my life…. Now I realize I behaved bad in Boston.”
Ramirez recently signed a minor league player-coach contract for the Chicago Cubs, a surprising move nevertheless interpreted as a necessary one for a man lost without baseball. Wednesday’s events–a ten-year-anniversary celebration of the first Red Sox World Series triumph since 1918–recalled much happier times.
Ramirez said it didn’t bother him if no one believed his new attitude yet. “A lot of people are going to say what they’re going to say, but I only worry what God said and how I’m going to walk and how I’m going to talk and how I’m going to treat my wife.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.