Sing it, Manny! "You load 16 tons, and what do you get? Another day older and a pro-rated 20 million dollars a year.."
I admit it: Manny Ramirez’s existence is a constant irritant to me. I regard him as epitomizing the worst tendencies of professional sports stars, and the attitudes of the most conscience-free who walk among us who make/ society and the culture a little bit worse every day. I was thrilled when his baseball career came to an appropriately sordid end, with his being caught using performance enhancing drugs and retiring o avoid having to serve his suspension, and nauseated when he announced the end of his retirement a few weeks ago, hoping to lure some addled team owner into paying him a million dollars or so to hit home runs and loaf.
Now, thanks to the research skills of baseball blogger Craig Calcaterra, my morning began by learning that Manny is also akin to the recording stars, Hollywood actors, rich politicians and toadying business executives who have tried to pass themselves off as Occupy Wall Street’s virtuous and harshly exploited 99% despite all reason and evidence to the contrary. In an interview in Spanish, Manny was explaining that he might have to travel to Japan to play ball again, and said,“Somos un obrero y donde quiera que haya trabajo hay que ir a trabajar;” in English: “We are the working class and must go where there is work.”
“Working class!” Continue reading
