A seven and a half year relationship is now over, as the Boston Red Sox finally gave into the insanity that is Manny Ramirez and sent him packing. This is a bittersweet day for Red Sox fans, a day that brings a tear to your eye while you are looking for someone to high five. Having Manny Ramirez in Boston was like having a psychotic nympho girlfriend. You are ecstatic when you’re riding high, but you want to pull your hair out when you have another bout of utter lunacy. Manny could hit a baseball like few players ever to enter Fenway Park, but he could send you to a padded room when he started his usual antics. The Sox might not be a better team after the Manny Ramirez trade, but they will never have to worry about another episode of Manny being a whiny pain in the butt. 

Over the last seven plus years Manny Ramirez asked to be traded out of Boston 147 separate times, not including 25 times that he was “misquoted”. His antics finally became too much, and even his own teammates were encouraging management to trade Ramirez. Manny’s complaining has done so much to hurt his value that the Red Sox had to cover the remaining seven million dollars left on his contract, as well as trade two major league players, just to get back a player with less skill. When people look back at this trade in a few years it may very well look like a disaster. Jason Bay is an All-Star left fielder, but his isn’t in the same class as Manny Ramirez. Craig Hansen is a talented reliever who just needs to figure out how to throw strikes to be a dominant reliever. The key to the trade may be Brandon Moss. Moss is a talented young outfielder that was without a place to play in Boston, much like David Murphy was last year. Murphy was sent to Texas for Eric Gagne, and is now making a run at the American League Rookie of the Year. Moss has the talent to be a .300 AVG/20 Home Run/80 RBI player, and in Pittsburgh he will have a chance to play and develop his skills.

If Ramirez had been more of a professional and less of a nutcase he would have been easier to trade, but was his craziness the real reason that he got the trade he wanted?