Then there was this recent, bizarre episode. In a key game against the New York Yankees, Manny came to the plate as a pinch hitter in the ninth inning and took three strikes from Mariano Rivera without taking the bat off his shoulder. There was immediate speculation from sportswriters that his noneffort was an intentional slap at Red Sox management over a disciplinary matter for which he had been fined. Nobody but Manny will ever know for sure. Name another Hall of Famer about whom you can even imagine raising that same question.

In Hall of Fame terms, we treat something as a character flaw only if it is elevated to the level of rule- or law-breaking. Thus "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and Pete Rose have been kept out of the hall because of gambling scandals, and Mark McGwire is only the first of the recent eligible players whose hall ambitions may be thwarted by questions regarding steroid use. We don't seem equipped to handle character issues that are any subtler than that. So there is, at the very least, something ironic about the fact that "Charlie Hustle" sits in permanent exile from Cooperstown while "Manny No-Hustle" (or, to be fair, occasional hustle, but you never can count on it) will get himself a bust there.

I admit to being amused by some of Manny's antics through the years. And I have celebrated two championships that I once thought I'd never live to see and can't deny that Ramirez's talents have been a critical part of the winning formula. But I have always cringed, or at least the baseball purist in me has, when Ramirez defies what fans of my generation were raised to believe were the fundamental mandates of the game. And like it does everything else, age seems to have exacerbated these flaws in Manny and my impatience with them. "Manny being Manny" has escalated from gaffes and brain-glitches on the field to more serious issues. Already this season he has sat out critical games as a petulant response to the "disrespect" of a team that will have paid him $160 million for the last eight seasons. He got in a clubhouse scuffle with Kevin Youkilis. And in the worst incident of all, the 36-year-old man-child tried to throttle a 64-year-old Red Sox official whose sin was a failure to procure Manny enough extra tickets for a game in Texas. Personally, I will not grieve for a second when Manny departs for greener pastures, even if next year he returns to Fenway in pinstripes.

Those who, like me, believe they know a Hall of Famer when they see one, should take a good, long at Manny Ramirez's career beyond the stats. He may be destined for Cooperstown. But once you examine the man along with his numbers, it's hard to come away quite as enamored of his lofty place in the history of the game.

© 2008