The Dodgers -- along with his ex-teammate Phillie Pedro Martinez -- seem to be under the impression that Manny Ramirez' leadership skills can carry L.A. past its 3-1 deficit:
Three players from that resilient Boston squad are participating in this series: the Dodgers' Manny Ramirez and Doug Mientkiewicz, and Phils pitcher Pedro Martinez.
"The experience certainly gives me the understanding that [Abner] Doubleday had something in mind when he had 27 outs and put the bases at 90 feet and all that crap," Torre said.
"Manny is someone who has been through that, and so has Doug," Martinez said. "They can be very inspirational to those guys."
Here's how Manny insprired his teammates on Monday night:
Yes, Manny Ramirez, that inspirational leader of men, didn't really get a good look at the hit that put Los Angeles in a three-games-to-one hole in the National League Championship Series. He might not have seen it yet. Not that it mattered much to Manny. Nothing he could have done about it, after all.
"I was out of the game, and I went in and showered," Ramirez said. "When I came out, they were coming in and turning off the TVs."
I'm sure they were. The rest of the Dodgers might have thought it was a filthy way for the game to end, but Manny was squeaky clean and unperturbed.
"What can you do? It's baseball," he said.
Outside of substituting the nation's second-largest TV market for the nation's fourth-largest (and, per capita, much more sports crazed), it's hard to understand why Fox, MLB, and their lackeys were so hot for a Yankees-Dodgers series. Ramirez is the Dodgers' only marquee player, and it's hard not to notice that ever since they asked him to whiz into a cup more frequently, the home runs pretty much stopped raining down on Mannywood.
The Phillies don't only have a much more compelling line-up, but they have the best manager in baseball in Charlie Manuel. Thank God he wasn't fired in 2005 and 2006 when we only judged him on his in-game strategy (which has improved, by the way) and allowed him the time to foster his kind of clubhouse and let his people skills emerge. More on the misunderestimating of Manuel, in a different context, in a moment.
Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order.
E-mail Will by clicking here.
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