Anyway, in March of 2004, like all Red Sox fans, Dee Dee, Joe and I had had our hearts ripped out of our chests and eaten while we watched our whole lives thanks to a laundry list of spectacular last minute failures, the most recent (and, for me, worst) of which had been only five months before. We were no different from every other Red Sox fan. Red Sox fans: remember the hell we lived in before they won? Losses in April put a pit in your stomach, ruined whole weekends. All our hopes on Frank Castillo and Mike Lansing. Jose Awfulman. Yipes. For non-baseball fans, lemme just say there was a time -- years in fact -- when wearing a Sox hat had an unspoken, vague shame that went with it. I forget what year it was, but I was in a bar watching Bryce Florie's face explode and the Yankee fan next to me said in all honesty, "The Red Sox will never win the World Series," and part of me believed him. I remember ascribing to a theory that they couldn't win because of the Green Monster. That's insane.
You get the idea. They were never going to win. There are a thousand places to hear the story of how they did finally win in 2004 -- historic, down 0-3 to the Yanks in the ALCS, blah blah blah. But before all that happened, in March, a couple days before I was getting on a plane for Florida, I had a dream. In the dream I am at the Sox facility and me and a group of strangers are sitting on the grass watching the team work out. The workout ends and the team starts leaving the field. Manny Ramirez, my favorite player since I was a kid, since Louie Tiant -- my favorite athlete -- walks up to the group, points at me and says, in a Latino accent, "Are you ready to win it all?" He used to never give interviews because he was embarrassed of his broken English so I'd never heard his voice. I remember feeling kind of scared. It was more of a challenge than an assurance they'd go all the way. I answered with an uncertain, "Yes?" and he walked away.
When I woke up, I didn't think much of it at first. I was like, "I had a dream and Manny was in it." Then I remembered. Manny POINTED at me and said, "Are you ready to win it all?" That's a message from God. Or at least Manny Ramirez. No, but it couldn't be about the Red Sox winning -- that was never gonna happen -- "Are you ready to win it all" meant that you can have everything in life, you can have more than you ever dreamed -- everything -- but you have to allow yourself to have it. And that is something you need to learn, to be ready for. There's a lot there. Life is a gift if we make it a gift. No. Ugh. That sounds awful. The thing is, we CAN have a life that is a gift -- we can have it all -- if we don't let the bad shit in our brains fool us into thinking we don't deserve it. I'm not talking about The Secret, or some such "I'm entitled to a yacht!" b.s., I mean happiness, and joy, but also hard stuff -- "it all." Also in that challenge are two things. One is the fact that we make our lives. Sure, there are things that happen that are random but it's the decisions we make that put us wherever we end up. That's a lot of responsibility. The other thing is that life may have some shitty things in it, but that is part of the gift that it is.
Jesus, that sounds a whole lot better four beers in. Less preachy. Less pie-in-the-sky-y. But I wanted to write this whole thing out so I could figure out how it'd work as a chapter in the book or something. We're both learning here. The thing is, "Are you ready to win it all?" totally became my motto after this. That morning I called like 10 people to tell them about it. I really did start thinking in this way, and still do. We make our lives. Two weeks after the dream, I had gotten laid (a rarity, no lie), in October, the Red Sox went on their unbelievable run and a year after that I somehow found myself floating in a massive pool in Thailand, shooting pool and playing Grand Theft Auto pretty much all the time. Talk about joy. I also got diagnosed with this disease that summer (2004). That's the "all" part. You can't have it all without bad stuff.
Some stuff about Manny Ramirez. Non-baseball fans may know his name because he got suspended for PEDs twice and had a kind of awful fall from grace. But you should also know there are like 50 things besides that that get overlooked. Most of it good. Just this year, after playing in Taiwan for awhile because nobody wanted him here, he's managed to get himself signed to a minor league contract with the Texas Rangers and has said that if he makes it to the big leagues, his salary will go to charity. When he basically got run out of baseball a few years ago, he said his plan was to go fishing with his father. One time he made a catch in left field, ran up the wall to slow his momentum, HIGH-FIVED A FAN, then came down and threw the runner out trying to get back to first, making for a double play. Nobody does shit like this. I remember being at Fenway, in the 8th inning, with the Sox down, men on base, and the whole place chanting his name, super loud, and he hit one out, I remember the ball soaring over the Green Monster, getting tinier then disappearing into the night. It was the definition of baseball magic. Once he totally freaked out Boston by using the song, "Good Times" by Styles P. which prominently featured the lyric "I get high" for his walk-up music. He reportedly used the death of his grandmother more than once as an excuse to come to Spring Training a week late. He was missing from left field during an inning and emerged from the Green Monster as the pitch was thrown. The reports are that he was peeing into a cup but I say he was doing bong hits. There are tons of these stories.
Manny's greatest hits:
Petting
Homer
Inexplicable Cut-off
Blooper Reel
Best Play Ever
