The Manny deal: a day later

Baseball players and bad management will break your heart. Baseball will lift your spirits. Don't fall in love with your veteran players. Baseball is like life.

All this is true.

I take little satisfaction in having predicted the departure of Manny Ramirez. He was a leading member of the cast that helped yours truly, after a long period of alienation, to fall back in love in 2003 (nice timing, eh?) with the national pastime. Manny has paired with David Ortiz to pose one of the most fearsome duos in baseball history, and his bat and the more playful aspects of his personality will be missed.

Yet Ramirez had become too unpredictable, too distracting, and generally too unpleasant to remain in a Sox uni.

Did the Sox give up a lot (paying the remainder of his salary for the year, and discarding Brandon Moss and Craig Hansen)? Yeah, but getting back Jason Bay was about as good as could be hoped for, largely because of a lack of suitors for Manny, who can now give Pedro Martinez a run for being a diva.

Who knows what will happen to this year's team? They'll get as far as they deserve to go. And while many of us will cherish our Manny memories, it had become clear that he was bound not for the Sox' future, but Boston's past.