Me again. Here's another reporter putting down Manny. I'm starting to
remember why I hate the media so much.

Lynne

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CLEVELAND – If this American League championship series becomes too
much to bear for the Boston Red Sox, if this deficit is too large and
these Cleveland Indians too polished for their weary baseball psyches,
it won't be Manny Ramirez's head that fails them.

Manny's psyche is just fine.

"If it doesn't happen, who cares?" Ramirez said Wednesday afternoon.
"There's always next year. It's not like it's the end of the world."

Presumably, this will not be the precise sentiment with which Terry
Francona sends his men onto Jacobs Field for Game 5. The organization
and its city stowed the wait-'til-next-year routine with the 2004 Idiots.

Who cares?

The 24 guys around him. His manager. His owner. The people who carve
off a bit of paycheck to squeeze into those old, narrow box seats and
chant his name every night.

They probably care.

The Indians, I'm guessing, care.

There are, however, two riders that need to be attached to Ramirez's
flippancy.

He does not speak for the Red Sox clubhouse or the Red Sox
organization. He goes years without speaking publicly at all, a
practice the Red Sox might now consider encouraging.

And he will show up with his bat and his act at game time Thursday,
hitting as though he cares.

As usual, there is an honest innocence to Ramirez and his merry
methods, along the lines of his arms-in-the-air, stroll-to-first
observance of Tuesday night's home run, a home run viewed initially as
probably meaningless, viewed later as entirely meaningless.

Choosing to ignore those details, Ramirez show-timed the contact,
gloated the trajectory, and finally leapt into David Ortiz's arms.

It was quite a show from four runs back, and ultimately two games back.

Kelly Shoppach, the Indians' catcher at the time and once a teammate
of Ramirez's in Boston, said he admonished Ramirez then and there.

"I told him to get going, like I would anyone," he said. "I love
Manny. He's a great guy. But don't do that to us. Everyone knows he's
a great player, but you don't have to show it. We don't have guys who
do that."

Jensen Lewis, who let go of the fastball that eventually landed about
400 feet behind him, smiled and said, "If he's going to celebrate one
run like that, that's up to him."

No matter. The Indians don't seem to have taken any real offense.
They'll gladly live with Ramirez's peculiarities for a few days and
leave the rest of the year to the Red Sox. Given the situation and the
series' shifting momentum, many of the Indians were in fact amused by
the antic.

"Man," Ramirez said, "I'm just happy to do something special like
that. I'm not trying to show up anybody. If someone strikes me out and
shows me up, I like that. It's all good. There's no hard feelings."

Good for him. It's what the Red Sox have left. That, and Josh Beckett.

They have lost three in a row at a bad time to do it, and in doing so
have had three consecutive starters fail to get out of the fifth
inning for the first time this season. Now there are suspicions
Beckett might not be in optimum health, though few players in October
are, and you wouldn't know it by the way he pitched in the playoffs.

A stroll through the Red Sox clubhouse on the workout day found
outward buoyancy, belief in Beckett, praise for the Indians, and a
tireless reluctance to lean too hard on anything '04 related.

These aren't those Red Sox, not entirely. And, should the series go
that far, the Indians have no plans to start Kevin Brown in Game 7.

These Red Sox haven't gotten a big hit since early in Game 2. These
Red Sox have stood around and watched two seven-run innings. They've
been outpitched since the moment Rafael Perez walked off the mound
Saturday. And they're running out of reliable relievers.

So, maybe Manny simply sensed how this thing is going. Maybe he tried
to portray looseness and had it come out wrong. The Red Sox don't read
as a team that could be talked out of the playoffs easily, not with
Beckett and Curt Schilling coming, not when they've already mauled
C.C. Sabathia once, not when one win gets them back to Fenway Park.

"We're just thinking about Thursday," Ramirez said. "Let's see what
the future is going to bring."

Whatever comes, Ramirez is right, it is not the end of the world.
Just, potentially, the end of a season, whatever that means to him.
There'll be others.

"Why panic?" he said. "If we don't do it, we'll come back next year
and try again."

Yeah, Manny's good to go.

Source: Tim Borwn / Yahoo! Sports