Manny, Manuel meet again -- on different sides of field
PHILADELPHIA -- Perhaps the biggest key to this entire National League Championship Series will be how effectively the Philadelphia Phillies pitch to Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez.
Which is quite fascinating on several levels, among them being that this is what Ramirez had to say of Philadelphia manager Charlie Manuel on Friday afternoon: "I remember as a rookie, he was like a dad to me."
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| Charlie Manuel and Manny Ramirez have been baseball's Odd Couple since their days back with the Indians. (Getty Images) |
Theirs is a bond forged across dusty minor league ballparks in out-of-the-way towns, in air-conditioned major league clubhouses and through hours upon hours of conversations because the one thing that Ramirez, 36, and Manuel, 64, love to dissect more than anything else in the world is the art of hitting.
They've been baseball's Odd Couple since their first meeting in Charlotte, N.C., in 1993, when Manuel, cut from the hills of West Virginia, and Ramirez, from New York by way of the Dominican Republic, met in the Cleveland organization.
Maybe neither man will ever again have a time as carefree and fun as in the mid-1990s, when Ramirez was establishing his foothold in the majors and Manuel, his hitting coach, lockered right next to him in the Cleveland clubhouse.
They had so much fun talking baseball and studying hitting, and they were both such a pair of overgrown kids, that it wasn't uncommon to see the two of them ... wrestling.
Yes. One of Manuel's strengths then as a coach and now as a manager is that he's always been able to reach all sorts of personalities, and sometimes when he thought that Ramirez needed an extra push, he'd provoke him into wrestling to get going.
"They wouldn't do Greco-Roman Olympic wrestling," said Bob DiBiasio, Cleveland's longtime vice president of public relations chuckling. "It was more Charlie bear-hugging him. As you would expect Charlie, a guy from West Virginia, to do."
Manuel first learned of the phenom that was Ramirez while managing the Indians' Triple-A club. He would listen to organizational voicemail reports each morning from various other managers of Cleveland's farm teams, and the same name kept coming up from one of the rookie-level teams.
"His manager was Dave Keller and he would say, 'Manny Ramirez hit a home run, Manny Ramirez hit two home runs, Manny Ramirez hitting .430,'" Manuel recalled.
The elder hitting savant couldn't wait to lay his eyes on the man he figured was a kindred spirit. And he finally did, in the Instructional League that fall, and what Manuel saw was "a really good, tremendous, young-looking hitter."
"I liked his approach at the plate," Manuel said. "I liked his weight shift. And for his mechanics, they were the same mechanics he's got today."
Well-balanced at the plate, slight lift to his swing, keen eye.
Ramirez jetted upward through Cleveland's system, finally reaching the Manuel-managed Charlotte affiliate in mid-season 1993.
"When he first came to the ballpark that day, he walked into my office and I asked him where his baseball bag was and his luggage was, and he said he didn't know," Manuel said. "I said, 'What the hell do you mean you don't know?' He said he left it at the airport. He didn't even get his luggage. He came in to get his cab money, too."
Manuel dispatched someone to the airport to get Ramirez's luggage. And soon thereafter, he discovered an even bigger problem than Ramirez's occasional lack of adjustment to mainstream society.
"The biggest problem was getting people to leave him alone because he could hit from the first time I ever saw him. ... Everybody knows how to hit, and everybody wanted to talk to him and everybody wanted to mess with him," Manuel said in his West Virginia twang. "If he went 0-for-4, they wanted to spread him out, change his stance."
"He always threw me extra batting practice," Ramirez said with his thick Dominican accent. "Now he's on the other side and every time I see him I joke around. I tell him, 'Take it easy with me. I'm just trying to get hits."
Part of Philadelphia's dilemma this series as the Phillies try to figure ways to retire Ramirez stem from those days. Ramirez always has been able to hit. But it was Manuel who helped refine him at the plate, and develop him as a man capable of existing within the parameters of the major league life.
All of us at some key point in our lives have someone to whom we respond, someone who possesses some sort of charismatic touch that strikes a cord within us.
With Ramirez, that person was Manuel.
Both men reached the majors with Cleveland in 1994 -- Ramirez as a rookie; Manuel for the first time since he retired as a player (he played for Minnesota and the Dodgers from 1969-1975) as hitting coach.
"What I remember most about Charlie and Manny was that when Charlie was hitting coach, Charlie would walk into that locker room, point to him and say, 'Let's go,' and Manny would hop to it and get into the batting cage," DiBiasio said. "It was that simple.
"During spring training, at 6:30, 7 a.m. you'd walk in and Charlie, Manny and even Albert Belle would have their lather worked up, working in the batting cage."
When Manuel became Cleveland's manager in 2000, Ramirez already was a three-time All-Star headed for untold riches. His chance for paydirt came following the 2000 season, when he became a free agent.
The Indians were prepared to stretch their budget beyond their wildest dreams, offering $17 million annually over eight years. But Ramirez's agent, Jeff Moorad, was chasing rival Scott Boras and the $252 million contract Alex Rodriguez had signed that winter and then-Boston general manager Dan Duquette had reached win-or-be-fired territory.
Boston offered eight years and $160 million, and the desperation on the sides of both Boston and Moorad made this a fait accompli.
In a sign of a changing Ramirez and of things to come, according to sources with knowledge of those negotiations, when Manuel placed a telephone call to him as negotiations were coming to a head simply to see where the Indians stood, Ramirez's handlers told Manuel that Manny couldn't come to the phone. The Indians couldn't believe it.
Years later, the Red Sox would find themselves burned by Manny, too.
Two years later, the two nearly were unexpectedly reunited. After Manuel was fired by the Indians at the All-Star break in 2002, Boston, knowing the relationship between Ramirez and Manuel, engaged him in conversations about becoming the Red Sox's hitting coach.
"We talked two or three times, and I was interested, but it didn't happen," Manuel said Friday. "I didn't think it was the right time or place."
Among other things, compensation was a sticking point.
The presence of Ramirez wasn't. Despite their parting of ways after the 2000 season, that was a lure.
"He had a lot to do with me thinking of going there," Manuel said.
So now they've come full circle, in starring -- but different -- roles in this NLCS.
The Dodgers would be nowhere close to any postseason time zone had they not acquired Ramirez on July 31.
And Manuel, who has overcome health problems over the years (heart attack, an infected colon, a colostomy and then a reversal of the colostomy procedure, among other things), and is gunning to become only the second manager in more than 100 years to lead the Phillies to a World Series title.
"I'm happy for him," Ramirez said Friday. "I'm glad after all of his surgeries, he's doing so well."
Now, Ramirez is studying Philadelphia pitchers and how to savage them. And Manuel is flipping through his mental file of his time with Ramirez, looking for ways to get him out.
So far, the advantage may go to Manuel, who knows a few secrets.
In a four-game series here in Philadelphia in August, Ramirez batted only .136 (3-for-22) with no home runs, no extra base hits, three walks and five strikeouts.
In 10 games against Ramirez this season (including a two-game series in June when Manny was still with Boston), the Phillies, who have consistently pounded him with inside fastballs, held him to a .212 batting average with one home run and five RBI in 33 at-bats.
Might Manuel's input have something to do with that?
"I don't know," Ramirez said. "Maybe you've got to ask him."
Manuel said yes, he contributes his ideas to the Phillies' internal discussions of how to pitch Ramirez.
"But we've still got to do it," he said. "And at the same time, he's going to be making adjustments."
Always, Manuel is watching -- has watched -- Ramirez.
"I don't know if you've noticed, in the playoffs he's been hitting the ball down," Manuel said, enthusiasm and appreciation for his former pupil still evident in his animated voice. "Actually, that's the only thing we used to work on. When I had him as a hitter, he would kind of come up and pull off."
So Manuel would throw the ball real low to Ramirez during batting practice, out of the strike zone, and tell him to swing at it. That way, by being forced to stay on the low pitch, Ramirez would have to hit the ball down.
No doubt, even if only fleetingly, each man will think of those times, draw from those times, over the next several days as he battles to get past the other and into the World Series.
"A lot of people think that when Manny came out of his mother, God said, 'You're a hitter, kid,'" Cleveland's DiBiasio said. "He put a lot into his craft. He hasn't short-changed himself at all.
"When they were together, Charlie never tired of talking hitting, and Manny never tired of hitting."
