Sox Drawer: While Papi progresses, Manny regresses

David Ortiz has made two rehab starts with the PawSox in his recovery from a wrist tendon sheath injury, and he has walked and mashed a home run in each of his two games.

So it appears that the most important cog in the Sox championship machine is well on his way to rejoining the club in the very near future, provided Papi experiences no setbacks in the next week or so.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that after months of toeing the line, acting like a team player, and singing Kumbaya about his tenure with the Sox, Manny Ramirez has suddenly turned back into the team-altering spectacle that seems to infect the club around this time of the year the past 3-4 years.

With Ramirez in the middle of a pivotal option year, and the Boston management apparently tiring of his antics, the question now is, how long will the dynamic duo remain together after Papi's return?

At first Manny had us all fooled into thinking this year would be different. He showed up to spring training on time (a first), singing the praises of his team and expressing his desire to stay with the ball club after his contract is up at the end this year.

I took this as a not so veiled attempt to get the Boston brass to pick up his 20 million dollar option for next season, so much so that I predicted he would win the AL MVP by putting up 'contract year' numbers, as players in these situations so often do.

The first 2+ months of the season went exactly according to this theory. Manny started off crushing the ball, blasted his 500th career home run at the end of May, and had another memorable MBM moment when he high fived a fan while in the process of turning a rare 7-6-3 double play.

It was all good times and no worries on the Manny front. He wanted to be here. The team and fans wanted him to stay with Boston, and the club appeared to be headed towards another long post season run, especially with Papi's return on the horizon.

But then things stared to change. For the worse.

Two well documented run-ins, one with teammate Kevin Youkilis in a game against the Rays on June 3rd, and the other with traveling secretary Jack McCormick in Houston on June 28th, painted a far different picture of the fun loving, happy-go-lucky left fielder, one that suggests he might have hidden anger issues, or at the very least an over-inflated sense of entitlement.

Who knew those two unfortunate incidents would only be the tip of the iceberg?

Since the McCormick incident, in which Manny shoved the 60+-year-old retired former cop and berated him over a request for 16 extra tickets to the game, the relationship between Manny and management, and even the ever-forgiving fans, has spiraled out of control at a rapid rate.

Before the All Star break, Ramirez pinch hit in a game against the Yankees and watched three straight pitches from Mariano Rivera go by him for a crucial strikeout in the 9th inning of a game the Sox would eventually lose, 5-4 in the tenth.

During the break, Manny had a curious interview in the Boston Herald that rankled Sox owner John Henry, so much so that he issued a response stating how offended he was that Ramirez would insinuate the Boston management has been anything but fair and straightforward with him through all the years of Man-sanity.

And then, on the heels of all this madness, came the play in the outfield in last night's game vs. the Angels.

In the 6th inning of the 11-3 Boston loss, Anaheim's Maicer Izturis blooped a fly ball to shallow left field that looked like a harmless single.

But Ramirez, ever the clown, decided to try and dive for the ball, even though it appeared he had no chance of catching it.

Sure enough, the ball landed in front of him, but instead of responding quickly and professionally to his miscue, Manny rolled backwards, flopped around like a fish out of water, and ended up laying on the ball as Izturis raced around the bases with an RBI triple.

Ramirez got up and laughed the incident off, but Terry Francona and Theo Epstein, who was seated behind home plate, were not laughing, and to everyone watching the fiasco, you got the distinct feeling that the play could have been the straw that broke the ManRam's back in Boston.

Whether or not the Sox deal Manny in the next few weeks, decline to pick up his option at then end of the season, or do end up retaining the unstable slugger, one thing's for sure:

when the circus act known as Manny Being Manny starts to include bodily harm and total disregard for the integrity of the game, it might be time to ship that sideshow off to the next town.