1 comments Bill Simmons Shows Up One Month Late For a Party and Does Not Even Bring a Gift: Part 1

Bill Simmons is back! He talks about the two topics absolutely no one is tired of...Manny Ramirez and Bill Simmons' own love for the Boston Red Sox. Did you hear Manny does not play for the Red Sox anymore? I had not until I read this.

If Bill Simmons wrote a Christmas card to someone and I could get my hands on it, I would write a post about it and if I ever find what he wrote in his 9th grade yearbook, I will write a post about that as well. As many of you know, I am having a hell of a time with factual accuracy at this time in my blogging life. So J.S. and I have hired an Ombudsman to make sure all facts are correct. We do all of this for you, our reader(s).

Simmons!

You may wonder why I am writing about a freaking epic 20,000 word article that Bill Simmons wrote, immediately after not being able to handle a 1,000 word piece by Gene W. without claiming the National League is now using the designated hitter and the LDS goes 101 games. I wondering why I am also but a Bill Simmons post rarely has any facts so this should be easy. This is Part 1 of the post and Part 2 will be up tomorrow or Saturday, so mark your calendars!

When I was working for "Jimmy Kimmel Live" in April 2003, our gregarious executive producer, Daniel Kellison, convinced a few notable Red Sox players to be our guest announcers before a three-game series in Anaheim.

You worked for Jimmy Kimmel? THE Jimmy Kimmel? The one with an incredibly not funny ex-girlfriend Sarah Silverman? Why have you never mentioned this before?

Oh, and yes, he is starting off with a useless story about the only thing in his world that matters...himself.

This useless story will seem exciting compared to the long discussion and the many many words of boredom you will feel talking about the reasons Manny Ramirez left Boston. I do all of this for you readers.

When we learned Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez were coming, we were infinitely more excited than for Britney Spears' appearance six months later.

"And we're going out afterward!" Daniel predicted gleefully. "We're taking them out!"

I would bet $100 that Manny Ramirez smells like a homeless man when you meet him in person. Make it $200 if he is wearing his batting helmet.

To Daniel's disbelief, I made myself a game-time decision.

By the way, Bill has no idea what "game-time decision" means. He is using it here to say he was not going, not that he would think about it, but that he was not going. My ombudsman says a game-time decision is when a coach decides whether a player will play or not...Simmons was not playing in this situation, so it is used incorrectly.

See, I think like a fan, write like a fan and try like hell to keep it that way. If I went drinking with my favorite players, I might see things that couldn't be unseen.

Let's play a word association game describing a story Bill told to prove Bill does not do this. First one to guess what I am talking about wins a box of stale Hot and Spicy Cheez-Its.

Tom Brady...

2008 Super Bowl...

Patriots perfect season...

Bill's "connected friend"...

Hotel room...

Nope, not a threesome. Bill was going to hang out with Tom Brady back in his hotel room after the Patriots won the Super Bowl against the Giants. I actually respect his decision here to not go out and stay "a fan," but I guess Bill changes his ways when it comes to Tom Brady.

Every time I watched the Sox from then on, when Wedding Ring Guy came to bat, I thought of him hitting on our 22-year-old talent assistant and jamming that ring in his pocket. And you wonder why I never want to drink with my favorite players.

You may be wondering what the point of this story is. You are not alone.

With Manny riding in the other limo, they started telling "Manny Being Manny" stories, like how Manny routinely stuffed uncashed paychecks in the top shelf of his locker. Seems he rarely got around to cashing them.

I am still waiting for Adam Corrolla to start telling some "Steve Being Steve" stories...you know since people say that type stuff about Steve Smith and all.

I heard Manny drives around town picks up little children in a pick up truck, then takes them back to his house, gives them lemonade while they plant a garden in his front yard. Then he gives them autographs and leaves the house, not returning for days. Manny Being Manny, I guess.

Papi pulled out Manny's card, felt an unexpected twinge of guilt and confessed. And Manny -- the alleged idiot savant with uncashed checks spilling out of his locker, the so-called dummy who stumbled into a record contract and should have been conned into paying for everything by his much, much, much smarter teammates -- was laughing and saying, "Nononono, I'm not paying"

Big Papi would have gotten a big punch to the face if he stole my credit card and then tried to get me to pay. This is a horrible Manny Being Manny story. It sounds more like David Ortiz being an asshole, which I always suspected. For some reason I felt like Dr. Sloan from "Diagnosis Murder" when I wrote that sentence.

I thought of that story when Manny began acting up again this summer. Boston's brain trust had decided to dump him. Again. We were doing this dance for the fourth time in six years. There were two crucial differences this time, the first being Manny had canned his old agents and hired Scott Boras, one of the worst human beings in America who hasn't actually committed a crime.

Oh yeah, I have heard about how much trouble the Red Sox have with Scott Boras and trying to meet his demands. Wait, no I have not. I am not sure how Bill thinks Boras is so evil since a fair amount of Red Sox players are currently managed by Boras.

You got Jason Varitek, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and J.D. Drew off the top of my head who the Red Sox signed while Boras was their agent. Of course Manny was represented by him as well. Maybe Bill is just mad that Johnny Damon and Derek Lowe left for more money. It is weird to hear a fan of a team with the second largest payroll complaining about Scott Boras, especially when my favorite team has traded or not resigned 2 players in the past year simply because Boras is their agent.

One of the team's minority partners, the New York Times Company, happens to own Boston's signature newspaper (The Globe).

Interesting. Not that the Globe would not write anything negative about the Red Sox.

Note: Not "the Sox" but the Red Sox. There is another "Sox" team, so you can't just say "the Sox," no matter how much you know it annoys me.

The Sox signed cushy deals with Boston's signature sports radio station (WEEI) and sister station (WRKO), and since those rights always can be shopped to a competitor down the road, you'll see CC Sabathia hit an inside-the-park home run before a Red Sox owner gets ripped to shreds on WEEI.

It's like they have their very own dictatorship to make sure decisions are not second guessed. Probably a smart move, I bet Hank Steinbrenner wishes he could do this.

Had the identity of the second villain been revealed, maybe Boston fans wouldn't have been so eager to downgrade from a first-ballot Hall of Famer to Jason Bay.

Oh, the guy who hit the homerun last night in the first round of the playoffs? He sucks!

He hit 31 HRs and had 101 RBI's this year and is a definite upgrade over Manny defensively so even though it was not an even trade, it's not like the Red Sox got Casey Kotchman in return.

Once Manny shifted into sulk mode, the Red Sox wasted no time painting him as a malcontent. After Manny berated the team's 64-year-old traveling secretary and shoved the poor guy to the ground, the team did everything but hire actors to re-enact the incident on www.redsox.com.7 After Manny skipped a crucial game against the Yankees, claiming he had a sore knee, management made a point of getting MRIs on both knees and telling reporters he was fine.

I realize Bill is the speaker for all of Red Sox Nation and he was taking a 10 week leave of absence so he can make money writing a book, but do we really need this to be rehashed right now? If you don't know this story, you don't like baseball, so you would probably not read this article. Thereby only those who already know the story are reading this article, so it is not news to them. Hopefully the ombudsman will miss my leaps in logic.

As the trading deadline approached and Manny continued his "Beavis and Butt-Head" routine,

Uh...his Beavis and Butthead routine...he was making snarky comments while watching music videos, picking his nose and passing gas? This is where Bill sometimes fails in writing. He can't accurately express an emotion without comparing it to something else and sometimes the comparison does not make sense to me.

This is one of those instances.

Manny hit a double-play ball and jogged to first base with the intensity of an underpaid bus boy cleaning a table at Denny's.

Shitty comparison but at least it makes sense.

On the NESN broadcast, Jerry Remy was coughing up a lung in disgust.

This would be funny if you did not know Bill Simmons is using his column to take cheap shots at Remy because he has a "feud" with him.

http://awfulannouncing.blogspot.com/2007/07/jerry-remy-throws-bill-simmons.html

Bill Simmons: Slowly turning into Jay Mariotti but without actually doing any reporting.

That is his motto now. Done and done...

Since Boston signed him in 2000, my life changed in the following ways: I started writing for ESPN, moved to California, worked on a TV show, wrote a book, got married, fathered two kids, bought a house, purchased two "Red Sox World Championship" videos and knocked up Jamie-Lynn Spears.

Why is this column reading more like an introduction to Bill Simmons for those who don't know him? This also has nothing to do with Manny Ramirez, but has everything to do with why Bill Simmons loves himself. Few people know the sun's power pales in comparison to the energy Bill expends in attempting to get his accomplishments into every column.

Over the last three years, my daughter has seen Manny and Papi on our television more than the Wiggles and Elmo combined. Manny became part of my family, for God's sake. Doesn't that count for anything?

Count for anything for what? Manny Ramirez is among the 200 million Americans who care neither about Bill Simmons or how many times he has watched a Red Sox game. Somehow he is simultaneously whining about Manny leaving and trying to prove a point that Manny was evil.

Manny was being Manny and wanted to be Manny as a free agent after the season. The Red Sox weren't going to give him this option, so he acted a five year old and did not hustle. The Red Sox, rather than benching him, gave him exactly what he wanted. It seems pretty simple to me.

By the 2007 playoffs, Manny had evolved into the jelly to Big Papi's peanut butter.

Because David Ortiz is fat, he needs to be the jelly...because he has a belly full of it, like Santa Claus...because they are both fat.

During a rain delay against the Yankees last weekend, NESN showed the 2007 team video and one moment startled me: After Dustin Pedroia cranked his insurance home run against Cleveland in Game 7 of the ALCS, he skipped happily back to the dugout and was greeted by a delirious bear hug from ... yup, Manny Ramirez.

Why does everyone get so excited that Manny can do something humans do? He is a weird guy, that does not mean he can not get excited at seeing his teammate hitting a homerun. Why the hell would this startle Bill? Did he expect Manny to get up on the dugout and start flipping off the crowd or mooning Pedroia? Everyone even makes Manny weirder than he probably is. My ombudsman says I can't say anything else because I have no proof but I would bet he is just really quirky and kind of misunderstood.

How was Manny's latest "funk" much different than Carlos Delgado seemingly mailing it in until Willie Randolph was fired, then miraculously regaining the ability to smile and hit home runs for Jerry Manuel?

Exactly. You know what those two players have in common? Both Hispanic. What does that mean? Nothing.

His funk was exactly like Randy Moss's funk before he got to the Patriots. Players pout, it just depends on whether the team will put up with it or not. The Red Sox got tired of putting up with it. Haven't we heard all of this before?

It's like ESPN said, "People read Bill Simmons, people love the Red Sox...let's have Simmons write about the Manny situation so we can get more web site hits!" Then they did it and now we have this document to peruse.

If anything changed other than Boras getting a "Special Guest Star" tag in Manny's ongoing sitcom,

This is a weak attempt to blame Scott Boras. How can Bill assume Manny is so individualistic and quirky that there is a phrase, "Manny Being Manny" where it insinuates it is hard to control and predict his actions, then try to blame a man behind the curtain for all of Manny's actions. I doubt if Manny is so fucking odd and tough to deal with, then Scott Boras was able to tell him to try and opt out of his contract after the season and if that did not work, then to not hustle around the bases. That is why this is weak to blame Boras. Scott Boras, though incredibly evil, can't control Manny and for Bill Simmons to try and manufacture a new angle blaming him for this is disingenious.

You didn't hear Simmons complaining about the evil that was Scott Boras when J.D. Drew opted out of his contract to come to Boston...and just at the exact time they need a right fielder.

Look, I've seen Manny pull this crap at least 200 times in eight years. This was worse than the other 199 times?

Bill even admits this was an ongoing problem. Was this part of a grand new scheme for Scott Boras or did Manny decide as he has done 4 out of the past 6 years to act like an asshole and the fact the Red Sox could get rid of him this time exacerbated the issue? Did Boras sit down with his friends/associates and say, "let's get Manny Ramirez to hire us, convince him to pout about the two options the Red Sox have on his contract, and then see if the Red Sox will trade him. Even though they have put up with his shit for years and now have all the bargaining leverage they would need."

We know which one is true. Manny hired Boras as his agent because he knew he was going to pout about his options just like he had pouted four separate times in the past, but this time he knew he has Scott Boras to get him a new contract.

Simmons is just trying to manufacture a different angle for this that is just not there. Yes, Scott Boras had something to do with it, but he controlled Manny no more than any manager or teammate had been able to control him over the past 8 years, which is very little. Manny decided to pout like a baby and Scott Boras did not discourage these actions. Bottom line.

My ombudsman told me that is the one potentially inaccurate statement I could make but I would have to retract it upon someone finding proof that a google search did not find.

it was an ever-evolving 25-man roster: more happy-to-be-there youngsters and businesslike veterans, considerably fewer Latinos and free spirits -- guys who seemed woefully ill-equipped to handle Hurricane Manny.

You heard it here first. Latinos can not handle Manny Ramirez, despite the fact he is from a Latin country, they all hate him.

Bill Simmons reported this, you can believe it.

Manny's 2008 meltdown wasn't much different than the ones in 2003, 2005 and 2006, only nobody kept him in check this time around. It was just a different team.

A quick recap: Scott Boras is also at fault for Manny Ramirez's behavior because Manny is acting the same way he has consistently acted over the past 8 years. Scott Boras had nothing to do with those misbehaviors back then because he was not his agent but he does now. Why? Because the team is different and there are less Latinos, which means Manny knew no one would prevent him from pouting and the grand scheme to pout himself into a trade would work this year. Then he would laugh insanely and play with his dreadlocks for two hours.

This feels like some odd scheme that a cartoon villain would put together.

When Coco Crisp charged the mound in June and got summarily pounded and sucker-punched by a swarm of angry Rays, not a single Boston player had his back or seemed especially perturbed about what happened. I thought it was the most telling moment of the season.

If they weren't sticking up for Coco, they certainly weren't standing up to Manny Ramirez.

So this team was different in that they don't help out their teammates when they are getting their ass kicked? Where is the Ubuntu on this team?

You are probably asking yourself, "when did Bill think the Red Sox team was not standing up for Manny? When he started pouting and not hustling or the exact moment Coco Crisp got in the fight?"

The answer: Bill knew the EXACT moment Coco Crisp got in the fight because he can read minds and tell exactly what a team is thinking at all times. He saw Coco Crisp get in a fight and said to himself, "When Manny starts not hustling, this team is not going to give a shit and stand up for him."

Manny's teammates have rarely stood up for him, publicly at least, this team is not different, they just had enough talent to where they did not need him as much anymore.

Tomorrow we will try to refocus Bill more on boring us with Manny Ramirez history and less on blaming random people for Manny's behavior in Part 2 of our Bill Simmons special.