''Just because I'm here doesn't mean we're going to win it all.''
-- Manny Ramirez, baseball writers dinner, Jan. 10, 2001
ORT MYERS, Fla. - It was a typically glorious morning during this unseasonably warm and dry spring, and Rick Down, the new Red Sox hitting coach, was sitting on a green park bench outside the enclosed batting cages, palm trees swaying gently above him.
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Where did it all go wrong?
After entering spring training with the highest of hopes, bad news has been an almost daily occurrence for the Red Sox.
Feb. 28
Two days after waking up with a swollen wrist, Nomar Garciaparra has his hand placed in a cast for two weeks in hopes of a quick solution to what is diagnosed as a split tendon
March 1
Eight days after saying he says he's comfortable with the decision that he'll play left field, $160 million man Manny Ramirez says he wants to stay in right
March 1
In the exhibition opener, Ramirez misplays a fly ball in right and the two candidates to fill in for Garciaparra at short make two errors each
March 6
The team announces Garciaparra's wrist will stay in a cast an extra week after an exam shows swelling is still evident
March 7
Late-arriving Carl Everett misses the team bus and is left behind by manager Jimy Williams, who has a long-distance heart-to-heart with the petulant center fielder
March 13
After two spring outings - one bad, one good - pitcher David Cone leaves after one inning with shoulder soreness that will keep him in Florida when the team heads north
March 14
After having trouble tracking down a couple of fly balls, Ramirez leaves the game in the third inning with a strained hamstring that leaves him in doubt for Opening Day
March 17
All's well that ends well, but . . . the team gets a huge scare when Pedro Martinez is hit by a line drive in his left (non-pitching) hand; he's OK and continues to pitch impressively
March 18
Reliable reliever Hipolito Pichardo has to shut it down with recurring elbow pain and will miss the start of the season
March 19
After learning he's going back to the bullpen to replace Pichardo, Tim Wakefield rips the club, then in almost the same breath tempers his anger
March 21
Some good news, maybe . . . Garciaparra has the cast taken off and says he thinks he could be ready for the opener despite lingering soreness
March 22
Trying to come back from knee surgery, third baseman John Valentin admits continued soreness will keep him from being ready for cause him to miss the start of the season
March 24
With an exam scheduled with another hand specialist, Garciaparra and the team now say it's unlikely he'll be ready for the opener, leading to talk of surgery
March 24
Slated to be the starting first baseman, Brian Daubach fouls a ball off his foot, leaving his immediate future - at least in the field - in doubt
March 26
After a consultation with Dr. Frank McCue, indications are surgery is just a step away for Garciaparra, who echoes those sentiments a day later
March 27
Lou Merloni, one of the leading candidates to fill in for Garciaparra at short, leaves the game after being hit on in the elbow with a pitch
March 27
Three weeks after the first incident, Everett is again missing from the team bus to Tampa and is scratched from the lineup after having driven north by himself
March 28
While Garciaparra says he'll wait a few more days before deciding on surgery that could keep him out 2 months or more, Everett is absent from a scheduled workout in Fort Myers, leading to a fine and suspension
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Down was talking about rivets.
''I had on the History Channel,'' he said. ''It was 3 in the morning. They had on a show about rivets.''
Esoteric tastes? No, insomnia. It was only spring training, but Down was fretful.
''I know we're going to hit,'' he said. ''I can't sleep when we're not hitting.''
If only it had been just a few bad swings that kept Red Sox fans cursing the darkness all spring. The same folks who had stampeded the Yawkey Way box office in record numbers this winter - inspired by visions of what their shy new socker, Manny Ramirez, would do in tandem with Nomar Garciaparra in the middle of the Sox lineup - were left wondering if it had all been a John Harrington practical joke that December day when Ramirez slipped on the home whites of the Red Sox, flashed two big thumbs up to the camera, and uttered, ''Bueno.''
The news ever since? Malo, muy malo. Bad injuries, bad luck, bad vibes, bad karma, bad to the bone in Nomar Garciaparra's injured right wrist, the one with the longitudinal split that has left a crack the size of Franconia Notch in Dan Duquette's master plan.
Duquette had become a TV star last winter. He was featured in an ESPN production, ''Manny, Manny Thanks,'' in which a 28-year-old Dominican immigrant decided he was too hip for Drew Carey and opted for ''The Connection,'' provided he could bring along the Cleveland Indians' clubhouse man to translate Christopher Lydon, prepare his sushi, and stash stacks of freshly minted Franklins in the glove compartment since vacated by Manny ''Muscles'' Alexander. What a country.
Duquette, who always remembers to send a personalized Xeroxed letter with his annual mailing of ticket price increases, couldn't believe the Sox' good fortune, which came at about the same price as the new Lenny Zakim Bridge (or so we'll believe until the Big Dig's accountants pass along the actual bill).
''Manny in the lineup,'' Duquette said back in December, ''will make Nomar and Carl Everett better hitters. It will make Jimy Williams a better manager. It will make Pedro a better pitcher. It just does so many things.''
Six weeks of spring training later, we'll just have to take Duquette's word for it. For almost all of the spring, Manny was missing. First, we were told to look for him in left field, until Manny decided to exercise his veto power the first time he was given the chance. That little power play might have been quickly forgotten if Manny had shown off any of his vaunted power, but then he felt a tweak in his left hamstring (which nobody heard because they were booing so loudly in right field), and that shut him down for the last 21/2 weeks of camp.
Tough to run those NESN promos when the new savior is reduced to a few jogs in minor league camp, and leaves Florida with a .154 batting average, 1 home run, and 2 RBIs, plus all those rumors he wishes he'd never left Cleveland to begin with.
No Manny appears to be a temporary condition, assuming Ramirez's hamstring doesn't go nostalgic on us and blow out the way it did a year ago, when he missed 44 games and the Indians fell short of a playoff spot by a game.
But when you started hearing no Nomar, that's when people back home started covering their ears and screaming, No mas.
Sox fans can take a punch. No John Valentin (jab). No David Cone (jab). No Hipolito Pichardo (jab).
But no Nomar? Might as well book your next facial with Johnny Ruiz. When Garciaparra woke up in late February with a wrist that felt like it had been chewed on by a rottweiler, the number of passengers left on the Sox bandwagon could fit into a Ghia, and still have room for Mike Lansing.
''We're pretty much at the end of the line,'' said Garciaparra, who was talking about ways to avoid surgery but could have been explaining why so many Sox fans had suddenly developed such a craving for Kool-Aid.
Could you have blamed Jimy Williams if he'd thrown himself under a bus? Maybe he would have, if he could have been sure Carl Everett was on it.
Bugs in his systems
Everett, cover subject of a magazine profile this spring entitled, ''Bad as He Wants to Be,'' would sooner have Barney in his locker than go Greyhound. When your kids start skipping the school bus, then come home and tell you how the principal disrespected them, then you'll know they've embraced Everett as a role model.
By now, it should be obvious to everyone it ain't the bus Everett can't stand, it's the guy driving it. ''Carl wants to play for the Red Sox,'' one source said. ''He's not asking for a trade. He knows he's not going anywhere. His only problem is the manager.''
If anyone should be having acid flashbacks, it is Williams. This is starting to look like Toronto all over again.
In 1987, with Williams as manager, the Blue Jays took a half-game lead in the AL East into the final week, then lost their last seven games when shortstop Tony Fernandez fractured his elbow and catcher Ernie Whitt cracked his ribs.
The Jays' high hopes carried over into the next spring, until pitchers Jimmy Key and Jeff Musselman were injured and George Bell, the 1987 American League MVP, defied Williams in an act so brazen it made the Sox center fielder look like Chad Everett by comparison.
Williams was determined to make Bell his DH. Bell, who had been playing left field, was equally determined that Jimy could take his plan and stuff it. It all came to a head in spring training - in a game against the Red Sox, coincidentally - when it came time for Bell's turn to bat and he was nowhere to be seen in the Toronto dugout.
Bell had already been announced as the hitter when Williams discovered he was lying on the grass in the Blue Jays' bullpen, sunning himself. Williams sent another batter to hit, then marched down the outfield line to roust Bell. The player got off lightly; the manager never recovered.
''We'll see who lasts longer,'' Bell said with a smirk. ''Either him or me.''
The Jays rebounded with a hot September that saved Williams's job for one more season. But with the team off to a 12-24 start in 1989, Williams was fired. Bell, of course, still had a job.
''He lost the respect of the players a long time ago,'' said an unsympathetic Damaso Garcia, a Blue Jays infielder who once set his uniform on fire in the team's clubhouse, an egregious act in the eyes of his manager. ''And when a manager loses the respect of the players, his days are numbered.''
It's worth watching
You don't have to be Doris Kearns Goodwin to know history is apt to repeat itself. Williams still has the loyalty of a core group of players in the Sox clubhouse, but you start to wonder if Everett's uncivil disobedience is fraying that respect as surely as the swelling in Garciaparra's wrist is ripping the fibers in his tendon.
The $97,222.22 fine? So much eyewash, as Williams would say. It has about as much chance of sticking as that fine commissioner Bud Selig allegedly levied against his good friend Harrington for talking out of school about labor negotiations.
Everett has a contract through the 2003 season. His acquisition from the Astros already has cost the Sox Adam Everett, one of the best-fielding shortstop prospects in the game. Williams's contract, barring a late-breaking extension, runs out at the end of this season. The Sox need Everett's bat, especially with Garciaparra hurt. And the size of the fine is likely to make Everett seem like the most wronged bus passenger since Rosa Parks.
So, what's a loyal Sox fan to do, wear black on Patriots Day? Hardly. There is still Pedro, after all. Trot Nixon showed anew, with his two home runs off Roger Clemens Tuesday, why there should be no shortage of bouquets from Winston Flowers in front of his locker. Tomo Ohka didn't walk a batter in any of his three spring starts. Jason Varitek and Scott Hatteberg both hit up a storm, not to mention the new kid, Sean Hillenbrand. Troy O'Leary looked like the 1999 model. Bret Saberhagen just won't quit, and at last may be rewarded for his grit. Derek Lowe is so good, few people even stopped by his locker this spring. Paxton Crawford has a cockiness that suggests he won't back down at the first sign of trouble.
We can only guess what damage a healthy Manny might do. And Nomar will be back, even if it isn't until the All-Star break.
It's probably worth sticking around for when he does.
