Associated Press
NEW YORK ó Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon on Thursday stood by a magazine interview in which he compared former teammate Manny Ramirez to cancer and said Boston made the right decision when it traded the slugger to the Los Angeles Dodgers last summer.
Papelbon was quoted in the April issue of Esquire as saying, “He was on a different train! And you saw what happened with that. We got rid of him, and we moved on without him.”
“So Manny was tough for us,” Papelbon added. “You have somebody like him, you know at any point in the ballgame, 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! 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.”
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PHOENIX ó Ramirez’ spring training debut was pushed back at least one more day.The Los Angeles Dodgers’ slugger was scratched from Thursday’s exhibition game against South Korea because of tightness in his left hamstring. Ramirez said he could have played, but manager Joe Torre decided to give him the day off.