People who read this blog know my love of the Red Sox, and my weekend of bliss is coming when the Olde Towne Team comes to the Metrodome. (My wife is a widow this weekend, as I'm seeing all three games.)

I don't care if the deal was sensible economically, I did not want to see my Sox trade Manny Ramirez. You don't trade Hall of Famers.

Let Manny be Manny, as Boston manager Terry Francona has already figured out. Get him time off when he needs it, figure there will be a couple of flare-ups, and Manny will produce. Even if at the end of his contract he's no longer generating positive cash flow, he's going to have numbers that leave him a fixture in the lineup producing runs. And for his fielding troubles, it's worth remembering that left field in Fenway is more often about playing caroms off the Wall and holding guys to a single than circus catches.

And he's not a liar.