Manny ain't no Sammy
If told that a charismatic, enigmatic Dominican-born slugger would be hoping to propel his team to victory in a playoff game at Wrigley Field, Cubs fans might think they are back in 2003, when Sammy Sosa still had one last chance before his fall from grace.
That was the year Sosa and his Cubs lost Games 6 and 7 at Wrigley to the Florida Marlins. That also was the year Manny Ramirez and his Boston Red Sox lost Game 7 to the New York Yankees and their legendary manager Joe Torre, who now manages Ramirez on the L.A. Dodgers.
Manny being Manny, Ramirez came back the next year to lead Boston past the Yankees. He hit .412 in the World Series to win the Most Valuable Player award, leading his Red Sox and their Manny-loving fans to the promised land with a series sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals. Ramirez and the BoSox won another championship last year.
Sammy being Sammy slumped in 2004, was criticized as a sulking former superstar who cared only about his personal stats, ducked out early on the last game of the season and was sent packing - without his boom box, which was demolished, apparently by a teammate.
Ramirez, booed and blasted by Boston fans and writers for many of the same reasons that dogged Sosa, was still a star when he got run out of town this year. Honoring his longtime wish to be traded, Boston sent Ramirez to Los Angeles on July 31. With 53 games left in the season, Ramirez hit .396, smashed 17 homers and drove in 53 runs to pull the Dodgers from second place to the division crown.
"Watching him, he's as good a hitter, especially right-handed hitter, as we've ever seen," said Cubs pitcher Ryan Dempster, the starter for tonight's Game 1 of the NLDS.
Cubs manager Lou Piniella talked about how much better the Dodgers got after "you add a Manny Ramirez bat to the middle part of that lineup."
"It makes the whole lineup a little bit better because he makes the people around him, I think, a lot better hitters," Dempster added. "They're going to see maybe a little bit better pitches because you know he's hitting behind them."
Meanwhile, aside from his names in the bricks next to Jack Brickhouse's name in the shadow of Harry Caray's statue, Sosa will be forgotten - even when other old Cubs stars are paraded before adoring fans as part of the Wrigley pre-game festivities.
True, both Sosa and Ramirez wowed everyone with their slugging, irritated fans with their idiosyncrasies (that Sosa hop) and their perceived lack of hustle at times. They both even took the field waving tiny U.S. flags - Sosa after Sept. 11 and Ramirez after he became a citizen. And while Sosa joked about getting his pop from Flintstone vitamins, Ramirez just signed a contract to endorse vitamin water.
But Sammy Being Sosa is no Manny Being Manny.
In three postseason series, Sosa had two bad ones and one good. He hit .182 with no home runs, no RBI and 4 strikeouts in 1998, when the Cubs were swept by the Braves. Sosa managed just .188, no dingers, one RBI and 4 strikeouts when the Cubs won despite him against those Braves in 2003. In the National League championship series against the Marlins, which the Cubs lost in seven, Sosa hit .308, crushed 2 homers and drove in 6 while striking out nine times. In his postseason career, Sosa hit .245 with 2 homers and 17 strikeouts, and didn't win any individual honors or championships.
Ramirez, on the other hand, has hit .300 or better in 10 of his 19 postseason series, 12 of which his team won. Ramirez tanked (hit .222 and .154) in the two World Series he lost with Cleveland, but overall, Manny has hit .269, smacked 24 home runs and driven in 64 runs in 95 postseason games - some of those against Torre, when he was the Yankees manager.
"We'd seen him more times than we wanted to," Torre said, noting it's nice to have the hitter in his lineup for this series.
"What I didn't know about him was his work ethic -" Torre said. "It's nice to know that he doesn't hit like that by mistake. He certainly works at it."
In a city that has seen the Cubs' Aramis Ramirez earn talk of an MVP award, and the White Sox' Alexei Ramirez emerge as the favorite to win the American League rookie of the year, the key to a Cubs victory in this series could be the pitchers' ability to keep Manny from being Manny.