Sports Redux: Remember Manny

Remember Manny Ramirez? Bill Simmons does, and he's spent the last two months on a roller coaster of emotion about what went wrong (coughScottBorascough), what could have been done to fix it, and what it all means. The result is a 750-page analysis that's well worth the hours it will take to read it.

Manny is still going strong, and so is his team, as he homered again to help the Dodgers wallop the Cubs (helped by many many Cub errors) and take a 2-0 series lead. We sympathize with our Chicago brethren: "Please, TBS, spare us this curse bullshit." We can only add that it's a million times worse coming from Joe Buck. The Rays won their first playoff game ever, riding two Evan Longoria homers to beat the White Sox. And the Brewers lost to Philly again, putting them one game away from their Certificates of Participation.

As for our own team, the news on Josh Beckett is encouraging (they say he is indeed ready for Sunday), while Mike Lowell is discouraging (probably won't play tonight). Dan Shaughnessy takes the bold stand that maybe the Sox have Anaheim's number. Really.

We also learned this week that Dustin Pedroia's nickname is "caballito", or "little pony". At least he has an excuse if he ever loses his voice. Speaking of nicknames, Daisuke Matsuzaka will try for a better nickname than "The Shakiest, Most Terrifying 18-3 Pitcher In History" tonight, and the Sox will try to make sure they don't have to fly back to the West Coast until Game 3 of the World Series.

Photo by Flickr's pvsbond. Used under Creative Commons license.