CLEVELAND — Manny Ramirez pulled off his dark designer sunglasses, tugged at his Dolce & Gabbana tie and smiled widely. Back in his element.
Manny being Manny. «It's an honor to come back to the house that I built, the Jake,» Ramírez said during a news conference at Progressive Field, known as Jacobs Field when the slugger played in Cleveland. «I know they changed the name, but I'm happy to be back.
I'm happy to be back in the city and the place that I grew up.» One of best hitters in baseball history, and one of the game's biggest characters, Ramírez, who broke in with those powerhouse Indians teams in the 1990s, returned on Saturday to be inducted into the Guardians' Hall of Fame.
Ramirez, 51, was relaxed and wildly entertaining during a 16-minute session with reporters in which he touched on his playing career in Cleveland and Boston, his ambivalence toward being voted into baseball's Hall of Fame and his future. «I'm going to play in Prague next year,» he claimed. «They saw me hitting BP (batting practice) and they said, 'Can you take some at-bats with us?' In Czechoslovakia, yes.» With Ramírez, anything's possible.