Papelbon: Manny was “a cancer”
Posted on March 12, 2009
Filed Under 2009 Season | Leave a Comment
Jonathan Papelbon is a few things: one of the best closers in the game, a fun loving guy, very intense, someone that speaks his mind, and a complete media whore. Those last two things combined when he did a recent interview with Esquire magazine. Some pretty interesting stuff came out of his mouth, here is a quick rundown followed by a bunch of full quotes:
1. Manny Ramirez was a cancer to the team. Guys like Tek, Wake, and Ortiz tried to smack him into place but it just didn’t work.
2. If Ortiz gets a little bit of Manny syndrome, Papelbon will tell him to shut up and do his job.
3. Varitek has already told Papelbon a handful of times to shut up and do his job ;X
4. I love Jonathan Papelbon and wish we could sign him for a few more years.
“It just takes one guy to bring an entire team down, and that’s exactly what was happening, once we saw that, we weren’t afraid to get rid of him. It’s like cancer. That’s what he was. Cancer. He had to go. It sucked, but that was the only scenario that was going to work. That was it for us.”
“The beautiful thing about our team is, we don’t let anybody get above the team. He wasn’t on the same train as the rest of us, he was on a different train! And you saw what happened with that. We got rid of him, and we moved on without him. That comes from the manager, and it comes from guys like Jason Varitek and Tim Wakefield and David Ortiz. Nobody is ever going to be allowed to do that. Even a guy like me, just heading into my fourth year in the big leagues – if David Ortiz gets a little, you know – I’ll tell him what’s up! I’m not afraid to do that. I’m not afraid to put him in his place, because I think everybody needs that.
“And if somebody does it to me, I understand that. I most certainly understand that. Varitek tells me all the time, ‘Just shut up. Do what you’re supposed to do.’ So Manny was tough for us. You have somebody like him, you know at any point in the ball game, he can dictate the outcome of the game. And for him not to be on the same page as the rest of the team was a killer, man!”
“And after, you could feel it in the air in the clubhouse, we got Jason Bay — Johnny Ballgame, plays the game right, plays through broken knees, runs out every ground ball — and it was like a breath of fresh air, man! Awesome! No question.”
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