“Mr. Epstein,” said the ace reliever, Jonathan Papelbon. “There is a cancer on your baseball team.”
It sounds like something out of the Nixon Administration so many decades ago. Back then it took a brave man named John Dean to go into the lion’s den and tell the President of the United States that his Administration was suffering from a fatal disease.
A failure to act condemned Nixon and his tenure in office.
And, now, Papelbon has said the same and revealed a parallel universe on the Boston Red Sox. The relief pitcher has not recanted. He has not vacillated, nor offered the standard refrain that his words are out of context.
Yes, it is to Theo’s credit that he recognized what Nixon never could. By doing so and trading Manny, he has shown that history can teach us a profound lesson. But, we must now laud Papelbon for speaking out when so many players go into lockstep silence before the media.
Tito Francona may wish Pap had not said it. He may wish it would go away, but Mannygate is now part of the folklore of New England sports. That dangerous vermin festered for a long time before someone finally spoke the truth about the last days of Manny in Boston. Ramirez had to go. He was destroying the team.
A player like that is indeed cancer.
When Theo finally performed the surgery and cut away the offending malignancy, the body of Red Sox Nation seemed to have a miraculous comeback. The convulsions ended abruptly.
The recently revealed interview with Esquire Magazine in which Papelbon shows the courage and virtue, like John Dean and Nixon, to speak up may forever be the closing argument on the case of Manny Ramirez. Now, someone inside the team has revealed the truth about what so many teammates dared not speak.
Mannygate continues to fascinate. It always will.
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