Fans Don’t Bother Ramirez; Umpire Does, Ejects Him
He still gets to hits and drives in three runs in the Dodgers win.
By KURT HELIN
Updated 6:03 AM PST, Wed, Jul 8, 2009
Crowd noise rolls off Manny Ramirez like water off a duck's back. Even a New York crowd that booed loudly for 20 seconds and waived signs with home-drawn syringes on them the first time he walked to the plate at Citi Field Tuesday night. Ramirez ignored the chorus of taunts hurled his way by New York fans, and responded with two key hits and drove in three runs.
Ignoring home plate umpire John Hirschbeck was another matter entirely
Twice he called Martinez out on questionable third-strikes – the second one in the fifth inning, with the bases loaded, Manny argued and as he turned and walked to the dugout he took off his forearm arm protector and threw it back over his head toward Hirschbeck.
Hirschbeck had missed it as he was walking away but the crowd didn’t and roared. Hirschbeck spun around, saw the arm protector near home plate, surmised what happened and threw Ramirez out.
That incident was not the first disagreement the two had in this game. In the first inning, Manny took a pitch on a 3-2 count and started to walk toward first when Hirschbeck called him out. Ramirez turned around, held his hands a foot apart to show how much he though the pitch missed by, then went back to the dugout. (Replays suggested Hirschbeck may have been right on that one, but wrong in the fifth inning.)
The ejection delighted a New York crowd that has long disliked Manny (there is that little Red Sox/Yankees rivalry he was a part of, so the entire city has never been a fan). Dodger fans flooded Petco Park in San Diego to give Manny Ramirez a warm welcome in his first two games back from suspension. That was not the case in New York.
But Manny couldn’t care less.
After striking out in the first, he had key hits in his next two at bats and drove in three runs that helped the Dodgers out to a 5-0 lead.
Before the game, Ramirez frustrated New York Media who for more than four minutes tried various questions trying to get him to talk about his suspension, all were greeted with a variant of “I don’t want to talk about the past.”
But he gave the New York fans what they wanted with the ejection. And he helped give the Dodgers all they really wanted, a win (of course, Clatyon Kershaw’s six scoreless innings helped to get the 8-0 victory).
Copyright NBC Local Media
First Published: Jul 7, 2009 9:20 PM PST
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