The Red Sox thought they had shed the continuous distraction of Manny Ramírez. For the first month of the season, for the first time in eight years, no one needed to think about him. Jason Bay took his place in the field. Takashi Saito took his No. 24. His locker stayed empty.
And then the Red Sox walked into their clubhouse yesterday, greeted by an extra dozen video cameras, a horde of reporters, and an endless loop of Ramírez and news of his 50-game suspension for using a banned substance on the televisions. There would be no avoiding Manny for one night.
The Sox reacted to Ramírez's suspension with mostly surprise, sadness at what it meant for baseball, and nonchalance at what it meant to them. They defended the World Series titles they won with Ramírez. Mostly, the Sox didn't think they would be dealing with Ramírez again, and definitely not for the reason they had to.
"Playing with him for a couple years, that's the furthest thing you think of," Dustin Pedroia said. "It's definitely unfortunate for him. I think for all of us, it's really not our issue anymore. He's gone to LA. Obviously, he's one of the greatest righthanded hitters ever. It's just tough to look up there as a fan of the game like anybody else and see a superstar go through something like this."
Red Sox management issued a statement: "In accordance with the Basic Agreement between Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association, the club is prohibited from commenting on the specifics or the facts of the matter related to Manny Ramírez. Major League Baseball keeps these matters confidential, and as such we do not know any more than what was released by the league. We staunchly support Major League Baseball's drug policy and commend the efforts associated with that program."
David Ortiz, Ramírez's closest friend on the Sox, said little. When reporters approached him, Ortiz walked past them. "No comment about Manny," he said. "I play for Boston. Manny play for LA. Go and ask him."
Ortiz circled back, but kept his comments brief. "Of course," Ortiz said when asked if he was sad. "You don't want nobody to be involved in a situation like this, but what can I say?"
Two questions were most often raised to the Sox: Did Ramírez use performance-enhancing drugs in Boston, and if he did, what of the World Series titles the Sox won with him?
"Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don't feel like our '07 season was tainted," Mike Lowell said, who was not with the Sox in 2004. "This is still a 25-man team. I think it still remains to be seen what happened in '07. I think Manny's going to be questioned a lot."
Ramírez earned a lot of reputations in Boston, but cheating was never one. Pedroia trained with Ramírez before spring training in 2008.
"He knows how to get into shape, he knows how to take care of his body and stuff like that," Pedroia said. "So that's obviously surprising. I'm not familiar with what happened and all the details. The only thing I know is I played with him for a couple years and he worked hard and I didn't suspect this stuff."
"We weren't really the best friends," Jonathan Papelbon said. "I don't think I'm going to sit here and try to figure out what he did when he was here."
Bay replaced Ramírez in left field, making his connection to Ramírez unique.
"My reaction was I don't know him, but I was going to get a lot of questions about him," Bay said. "I knew regardless of me not knowing him one bit, I was still going to get asked about it.
"It's another mark for baseball," Bay added. "It's tough that a lot of this stuff goes down. As a baseball player and a baseball fan, it's another black eye that you've got to fall out of a little bit. It's unfortunate. Hearing that, it's a huge name. It's not an everyday occurrence."
The Sox roundly rejected the notion that Ramírez took a drug that would result in a positive test without knowing, an excuse Ramírez used in the statement he released. Papelbon was asked about the difficulty of comprehending the banned list of substances.
"It's really easy, actually," Papelbon said. "They make a pamphlet for you in English and Spanish. You just read it and you know what you can't take. It's really not that hard."
Said Lowell: "I don't understand why now anyone would even come close to taking anything that could remotely result in a positive test. In the past, if guys did it, they had the crutch that they weren't testing. Maybe there's some stupid society that maybe I wasn't invited to. I don't get it. I don't. I wish I could, but I don't."
Red Sox players, particularly younger players, wished the issue of performance-enhancing drugs would disappear.
"I think the game is changing in a different direction," Pedroia said. "You see a lot more speed guys. You look at the Indians - Grady Sizemore. He's a younger player. He's very exciting in the outfield. He steals. He hits a lot of triples. That's the player I think that the game is going to. It's exciting. There's a lot of younger players that hopefully a lot of fans can look to and say this game is changing the right way."
