Beyond that, the White Sox recently acquired Manny Ramirez. There is precedent for his generating stories.

Wherever Manny Ramirez has played, those around him have at some point found themselves shrugging and saying “That’s Manny being Manny,” sometimes through clenched teeth.

Over the past eighteen seasons, that has meant that Manny has demonstrated no particular interest in pursuing fly balls, even those veering into his sector of the outfield. Or it has meant that he’s conserved his energy rather than run toward first base after hitting the ball on the ground.

But to be fair, Manny has also been being Manny when he has hit exceptionally well. As a member of the Cleveland Indians, he twice led the league in slugging percentage. The Red Sox, whom Ramirez joined in 2001, eventually grew so tired of Manny being Manny on the bench with injuries real or imagined and asking to be traded only not really that they offered him on waivers to anyone who could come up with twenty thousand dollars. But Ramirez knocked in one hundred thirty runs for the Red Sox team that finally won a World Series in 2004, and his mopery notwithstanding, he had 88 more when they won again three years later.

When the Dodgers invited Ramirez to establish Mannywood in their glitzy midst in 2008, they must have been ecstatic with the initial payout. Manny hit .396 over the last fifty three games of the season and propelled L.A. into the playoffs, during which he hit well over .500.

But my own favorite Manny story during the time he was with the Red Sox had nothing to do with his batting average. It involved a transaction that transpired in the outfielder’s suite at the Ritz Carlton, where he had stashed dozens of his game-worn jerseys, bats, baseballs, and, oddly enough, a great many pairs of baseball shoes, also allegedly his. Manny, whom the Red Sox were paying in excess of twenty million dollars per season at the time, summoned a local memorabilia dealer to the Ritz, and told him to bring cash and a van, which the dealer proceeded to fill with Manny’s stuff, in return for a bag of money.

 “Why?” I wondered.
 “Manny is very tight with a dollar,” the dealer told me.
 “How’s the reselling going?” I asked him.
 “Those shoes are jumping off the shelves,” he said, which I think Manny, being Manny, would have enjoyed.

The minor league team in Lowell, Massachusetts, gave away Jack Kerouac bobblehead dolls one night to a lot of people who didn’t know who Jack Kerouac was, let alone that he’d been born in Lowell.

Minor league teams have also featured such draws as the dynamite lady, a not-so-young woman who dressed in a red, white, and blue bathing suit covered with sequins. She climbed into a cardboard box at home plate, and, well, exploded. Or at least the box exploded. Or it appeared to, after which the dynamite lady would miraculously jump up out of the thick smoke, wave to the crowd, and disappear on her high heels into the home team’s dugout.

But the Montgomery Biscuits, Double A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, are playing with a different sort of promotional dynamite. On August 19th, ladies night at the ball park, the Biscuits offered up a date with their third baseman, Henry Wrigley, to the female fan who most convincingly filled out a compatibility questionnaire, then prevailed between innings at various competitions labeled sumo, tug of war, and something called “Medieval Madness.”

In a video promoting the attraction, Emeel Salem, one of Henry Wrigley’s teammates, celebrated the third baseman’s qualities.

“We were going by an animal shelter,” Salem reports in a videotaped endorsement. “And, you know, Henry has such a big heart. He rescued two dogs, and raised them up, and they’re part of his family. So Henry is such a sensitive guy, a great guy, and quite a catch.

I do not know who won the date with Henry Wrigley last Thursday night, and of course I don’t know how that date went. It’s none of my business, I suppose, and none of yours. But in this sad time for baseball fans, this time of the ascension of pro football and basketball, even as the popularity of the summer game has declined, can there by any doubt that if Henry Wrigley and his companion had a good time, “Win A Date With One of Our Players” will soon be featured at a ballpark near you?

Former MLB pitcher Roger Clemens during a news conference in 2008 about alleged steroid use in Houston. A federal grand jury has indicted Clemens on six counts, including two counts of perjury, for his testimony before Congress. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1.5-million-dollar fine. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

The indictment of Roger Clemens presents once again a challenge with which thoughtful sports fans have long been familiar.

Do we allow what some of the athletes do off the field to diminish our delight in what they and others do or have done on it?

They test us, these clowns, don’t they?

They get caught carrying guns on to airplanes, then go all wide-eyed and maintain that they’d forgotten the guns were in their luggage, or they say that the guns belonged to somebody else, or that the luggage did. Or something.

Or they bring guns into their locker rooms.

They dose themselves with steroids and then, if they’re caught, they confess in words their attorneys have hired some other people to write. Or they say they thought it was flaxseed oil. Or they shake their fingers at congressional committees, having previously signed autographs for the grandsons of the congressmen, and then we learn they have tested positive.

They drive recklessly and get into accidents and alcohol is involved.

They shoot themselves in the legs, and other people in other places, or they hire people to do it.

As their professional careers are only beginning, while they are still living on college campuses, they steal computers and credit cards from their dorm mates.

They speak of themselves in the third person and inhabit comic book personas.

They make bad music.

They get into the news for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with points, wins, or championships…reasons like possession of a controlled substance with intent to commit stupidity.

And we keep watching them, because the games they play continue to be absorbing. In their best moments, they give us – or have given us – images of grace and excellence. They provide our days and nights with suspense, and sometimes with an outlet for growling and griping that we might otherwise direct elsewhere. They make a kind of art, and if their brilliance is not lasting, perhaps we appreciate it all the more for that.

The happy truth to which we cling – we fans of the games that are sometimes betrayed by those who play them – is that those games endure and always will endure the insults, great and small, intentional and unconscious, of those who play them at the highest levels.

     More recently the city has
Produced the Brockton Rox.
     Like minor league clubs everywhere
They’ve tried to knock the socks
     Off folks with their promotions,
 Hoping they could fill the seats
     Through wins, of course, but also
On the nights of their defeats.

     They’ve brought mixed martial
Arts to baseball,
     Hoping you’d agree
That broken bones and blood are things that
You should pay to see
     Alongside pitching, hitting, fielding,
The odd sacrifice…
     I’m talking bunts and flyballs, now,
Not cuts requiring ice.

     And now Bill Lee has joined the Rox.
I heard the news this week.
     He’s sixty three years old, is Bill
And something of a freak,
     In that he still can sort of pitch…
At least he thinks it’s true,
     And those in charge in Brockton?
Who knows? They may think so, too.
     More likely they have figured that
Since Bill Lee isn’t dead,
     And since their ballclub’s prob’ly
Nearly knee-deep in the red,
     That Lee might sell some tickets
To the battered, limping few
     Who still remember, decades later,
What Bill Lee could do
     When he pitched for the Red Sox
Over thirty years ago:
     He baffled Billy Martin’s Yankees,
Sometimes throwing slow,
     And sometimes even slower,
Sometimes throwing at their heads.
     (I will not talk today of how
He fared against the Reds.)

     So are you of a certain age?
Do you remember Bill?
     He is an ancient spaceman now,
But still, perhaps you will.
     In any case, he goes for Brockton
On September five…
     Or so report the Rox these days.
I hope it isn’t jive.
     For even if he’s hammered,
As my guess is he might be,
     It might be fun to see once more
The act that is Bill Lee.

Boston Celtics head coach Doc Rivers (r) presents Shaquille O'Neal with his new jersey at a news conference on Aug. 10, in Waltham, Mass. (AP Photo / Greg M. Cooper)

On Tuesday Shaquille O’Neal was introduced to the members of the sporting press in Boston, who were perhaps not surprised to learn that he’s very big and tall.

O’Neal has a lot of nicknames, perhaps the weirdest  of which is “The Big Aristotle,” but he had asked Celtics fans to suggest a new one for him as he prepared to join their team. My own favorite is “The Big Chowda,” because it’s exquisitely silly. The Big Bean might have been more appropriate, also more alliterative. Anyway, Mr. O’Neal likes “The Big Shamrock,” so until somebody comes up with something better, I guess that’s who he is.

Today’s star athletes have treasure, privileges, and opportunities of which their predecessors couldn’t have dreamed, but when did the opportunity to chose one’s own nickname come into it?

The bestowing of nicknames was once the responsibility of sportswriters.

They were the ones who started calling George Ruth “Babe,” and later the “Bambino,” and at some point, probably early one morning after lots of refreshment, “the Sultan of Swat.”

They were the ones who began calling Pete Maravich “Pistol,” which, given how often Maravich shot the basketball, was not especially imaginative, but had a certain hokey cache anyway.

One of those sportswriters was ringside watching Ray Robinson, whose name was actually Walker Smith, Jr., work out one day, and he muttered something about the young man’s moves and style being sweet as sugar. The rest was history, not only for Robinson, but for every other fighter named “Ray,” and lots of fighters named something else.

We’ve seen the coming and going of “Say Hey,” “Neon Deion,” “Mr. October” and “Rocket” Richard, as well…and once, long ago – between 1871 and 1884, to be precise – there was an infielder named Bob Ferguson. The origin of his nickname, which was “Death To Flying Things,” remains deliciously mysterious. But who can possibly think that it was Mr. Ferguson’s idea?

So should Shaquille O’Neal get to change nicknames every time he changes teams? And should he get to pick the one he wants? Shouldn’t he have to wait until he does something to earn a new one? Something like, for example, blocking five or six consecutive shots in a big game…after which, who knows? Maybe some sports writer with a long memory would start calling him “Death To Flying Things.”

Make your own suggestions for a new Shaq nickname in the comments section below. To read about O’Neal’s long journey from top draft pick to NBA elder statesman, read Doug Tribou’s column about Shaquille O’Neal’s final act. 

Lots of listeners write to encourage “Only A Game” to feature sports they feel we’ve neglected, and this particular email seemed to fall into that category. “Here’s an offbeat sport for you,” it began. “Combined diving.”

All right, I thought. Combined diving. Maybe. But it was paragraph four of the email that cinched the deal. It read as follows: “Men and women compete as equals…divers compete with a single horse, two horses, and four horses…a four in hand.”

I was surprised that this potentially cruel endeavor appeared to be sanctioned by the American Diving Society. How could any society – no matter how debauched and decadent – endorse diving on horseback? Wasn’t that bound to be dangerous, no matter how deep the pool? Where was the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals when it was most needed?

I didn’t dismiss the correspondence as a prank because, hey, it began with the emailer’s praise for the program’s coverage of “off-beat sports.” Perhaps he or she had heard our story about belt-sander racing, or the one about rutabaga curling, or maybe the tale of fearsome competitions between humans and zombies on college campuses across the land.

“So, yeah,” I thought. “Combined diving. Men and women, both no doubt in flattering bathing suits, competing as equals, presumably on stallions, mares, and the odd gelding, also competing as equals. We’ll look into this. Absolutely.”

Then the phone rang. I talked to somebody about something. When I turned back to the extremely promising email, I noted with dismay that I’d misread it. The subject was combined DRIVING. Driving. Men and women competing as equals guiding horses around a course in Italy. On dry land. Happens every year, apparently.

Sure, it might be fun. But it was no “combined diving,” was it? No horses with men or women on them hurtling from tiny platforms into inadequate pools far below.

If you hear about a sport like that, let us know. But don’t wait until after we’ve taken a week off.

You may be unfamiliar with Steve Ralston, since he is not married to a former Spice Girl, has never been tossed from a game for head-butting an opponent, and has never scored a goal during the World Cup finals, while everyone was watching. But nobody has played in as many MLS games as Ralston has, and nobody has started more times or played more minutes. Nobody has tallied as many assists.

Ralston’s records bespeak longevity, obviously, but they also indicate determination, durability, the degree of respect from coaches Ralston has earned, and, to some extent, unselfishness.

New England Coach Steve Nicol has spoken often of Ralston’s value to the Revolution, whom he joined in 2002 after six seasons in Tampa.

“He has a great soccer brain,” Nicol once told me.

Steve Ralston retired Tuesday night after making one last appearance on behalf of the Revolution. There is talk that he will take that “great soccer brain” to Houston, where he will become an assistant coach. If so, the organization and the players there will be well served.

In a conversation following a Revolution practice a couple of years ago, Steve Ralston said that he got as much satisfaction from putting the ball on the foot of the guy who scored a goal as he’d ever gotten from scoring himself. This is an easy thing to say, I suppose, but when he said it, neither his coach nor any of his teammates laughed or otherwise gave him a hard time. In fact, Steve Nicol went on to speak about the extraordinary touch it took for Ralston to have so often set up his teammates so well. Then Ralston, who seemed to have become uncomfortable with the attention, smiled and said something like, “Sometimes I just kick it in toward the middle and hope something good will happen.”

A wise sportswriter of my acquaintance has warned me against celebrating any athlete before he has been dead for some time, and his point is well taken. Maybe in the first days after his retirement as a player, Steve Ralston will knock over a convenience store, drink a great deal of cough syrup, punch a gaggle of paparazzi, or attempt to carry an automatic weapon on to a plane.

No matter. I’m going to take the risk. Steve Ralston’s years with the Revolution gave soccer fans here the opportunity to learn a good deal about how the game should be played by watching a professional at work.

The boss was gruff and grumbly and he spread his dough around…
I’m told that his employees would all tremble at the sound
That rumbled from the owner’s box whenever New York lost,
And the boss would buy new players, never flinching at the cost.
I’m told he could be kind to kids. His contributions flowed
To charities most grateful for the largesse that he showed.
It’s also said his fellow owners choked upon his name.
For escalating salaries they said he was to blame.
And then, of course, some contributions also went astray
According to the laws by which most others have to play…
His campaign contributions helped Dick Nixon to prevail.
How odd that neither of those fellows ever went to jail.

But I digress, George Steinbrenner, who passed away this week,
Presided over champions. His Yankees, at their peak,
Were brilliantly successful. He raised up a fallen team.
His money and determination, doubtless were the steam
That fueled a rebuilt stadium, and then a new one, too.
Without such wonders as he wrought what would New Yorkers do?

It would be wrong to overlook the ways in which the man
Transcended baseball utterly. No other owner can
Lay claim to hosting SNL, and gracing Seinfeld, too.
I’m told he also helped build ships. Who knows? It may be true.
The lives of almost all of us are cluttered, mixed, and full
Of days we can be proud of and of days so full of bull
That we’d as soon forget they happened, if we ever could.
We’d all prefer to be remembered mostly for the good.

And so I say, farewell, old Boss, and may you rest in peace.
And may the world from which you’ve found the ultimate release
Remember you for how you smiled upon a team that won,
And then went out to win again, now that your time is done.

As it happened, on Saturday I was in a Mexican restaurant when it came time for Spain to play Paraguay. Though the other dozen or so patrons were all Anglos like me, the proprietor, the cook, and the waitress were Latino, so the broadcast was in Spanish.

This was fine with me, as I am currently trying to improve my very poor Spanish by listening to CDs, memorizing the forms of irregular verbs, and reading a book of poems in Spanish. Or sort of in Spanish, since each facing page features the English translation.

If Spain v. Paraguay had been an unexceptional game,  I’d probably have been fine with the Spanish broadcast, content to capture the odd word or phrase as the chatter raced by, happy to nod, smile, and say “Gracias” to the proprietor as he brought more food and drink to our table.

But shortly after the second half began, it became apparent that this game would not be unexceptional.

With both teams scoreless, in short order, Paraguay was awarded a penalty kick, which they could not convert; Spain was awarded a penalty kick, which they did convert, except that the referee detected encroachment and awarded Spain another penalty kick, which they could not convert.

Somehow this mad series of events inspired me to try to say something in Spanish to my host. I don’t know why. It just happened.

I turned to him and I hope I said, “In all your life, you might never see another game like this…nothing but surprises.”

Of course, given the CDs to which I’ve been listening in my car, I may have said, “In my niece’s life, she has been married. Twice. Summer is smiling in Chile.”

Or perhaps, “This is too much. A dry cleaning establishment in the hotel? What is he studying?”

I will never know, of course. That’s part of the adventure. But before he turned his attention back the game, the proprietor smiled. I took this as a good sign.

But the governments of at least two of the countries represented by teams that were unsuccessful in South Africa are focused on those failures, and the consequences have been passing weird.

The French team was an embarrassment, not so much because they couldn’t beat anybody in their group, as because members of the team fell to bickering with the coach, one of them got sent home, and the rest, behaving like adolescent truants, boycotted a practice. But the Minister of Sport in France made a dumb situation dumber by referring to it as “a moral disaster,” and then the President of France summoned members of the team to his office, in the process cancelling appointments having to do with the efforts of non-governmental organizations to help various people who aren’t soccer players.

After the Nigerian team crashed out of the tournament with two losses and a draw, the President of that country, Goodluck Jonathan, challenged his French counterpart in the absurdity derby by suspending the team from international competition for two years…a decision apparently designed to enhance Nigeria’s soccer profile by making the team invisible. I can’t resist. Goodluck with that, Jonathan.

Both these actions irritated FIFA President Sepp Blatter, since he and his predecessors have always maintained that creating empty mountains out of soccer molehills is the business of their bloated, self-aggrandizing bureaucracy rather than the bloated, self-aggrandizing bureaucracies presiding over various nations.

On Tuesday, Mr. Blatter blathered as follows: “Definitely I can tell you that political interference will be dealt with by FIFA notwithstanding what kind of interference and what is the size of the country.”

FIFA has never actually declared war on a sovereign nation, but Mr. Blatter’s remarks suggest that this may change soon if the presidents of France and Nigeria don’t shape up. Mr. Blatter would be better off concerning himself with employing officials who notice when the ball has crossed the goal line, but at least he has an excuse for blithering. International soccer is his business, and every four years a certain amount of posturing is apparently required from the fellow in Blatter’s seat.

But are there no wars? Are there no economic or natural disasters? What should we make of heads of actual states who are more nuts than their constituents are regarding soccer?