As predictable as a July heat wave

Manny's bitchin' up in Boston

According to Tom Verducci in the August 1 issue of Sports Illustrated, Manny Ramirez has asked to be traded from the Red Sox. Verducci writes "Manny Ramirez wants out of Boston. Again. The Red Sox leftfielder has asked to be traded for at least the third time in the past four seasons. He told team officials he is unhappy in Boston, particularly with his lack of privacy off the field. The Red Sox have no intention of trading Ramirez (.277, 27 homers, 90 RBIs) -- not during the season, anyway. They could field offers in the off-season for Ramirez, who is due $57 million over the next three years.

Hmmm. Lack of privacy, eh? Then why let the paper come to your apartment to shoot photos of your kid's room, you loon?

Elsewhere, another AL East left fielder is profiled.

Trailed constantly by a scrum of Japanese reporters eager to record any Matsui moment for the devoted and insatiable Japanese media machine, Matsui invariably wore a smile--unlike the prickly Ichiro. "I asked for this life," he would say. "Nobody forced it on me and I have a duty to the people who put me here." He refused to charge admission at the Hideki Matsui House of Baseball back home--a practice which stood in marked contrast to the Ichiro Museum in Nagoya, which a ticket costs $8. It just wouldn't be fair, he explained.

Some cyincs called Matsui simpleminded, a workhorse wihtout the brainpower to comprehend what all the attention really meant or the sophistication to mimic Ichiro's studied cool. But Matsui, who in fact had been an attentive student with high marks in math (one who actually sat in the first row of the classes he attended), would shrug and say, in his coarse baritone, "I'm just an ordinary guy." He liked to have an occasional beer. He loked to shoot the breeze with the security guards and maintenance personnel, and he liked to trade tapes form his extensive library of adult videos with reporters. (His reply, when asked about his eccentric hobby, was a droll "Doesn't everybody do this?") [all sic]

I prefer our eccentric left fielder to Boston's.