While the trade talks continue to swirl and Major League executives posture for position with the non-waiver trade deadline less than two hours away, a Manny Ramirez deal seems all but dead.

Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp were the two biggest names that seem to be emanating from Chavez Ravine, but both that trade tha the three-way deal appear to be dead ends. I assumed that much of the “deal is dead” talk was posturing to get the best possible deal while giving up the least amount – a time-honored art in baseball negotiations -- but it appears that, in the end, nobody else wanted to take on Manny despite the Sox offering to play his salary and deal prospects as well.

The sense I get from everyone I've talked to is that the Sox were doing everything they possibly could to get Ramirez out of Boston, and put an end to the ESPNdeportes.com bomb-dropping brigade that's ovetaken the Fens in the last few days. Ramirez has put his contract well above and beyond the greater good of the team during the last week -- by sitting out games and by loafing it up the line along with his customary, normally harmless Manny Being Manny hijinks -- and the worm has turned with more than a few guys in the Red Sox clubhouse.

Simply said: it's time for Manny to go.

Here's a quick Q and A with team Captain and certified clubhouse Heart and Soul Jason Varitek about all of the Manny chatter, with the last quote revealing a bit of how much Varitek disapproves of Manny's tactic of going public with ESPNdeports:

How do you get past the Manny stuff when it’s so all consuming?
JV: Time. Time will get us past it, but it can’t affect our play. Our play has got be focused on doing the little things and focusing on pitch to pitch. We need to focus on doing those things and everything else will take care of itself.

Is that easier said than done?
JV: We have to focus on ourselves. If everybody is 3-for-4 every night and pitching shutouts then I don’t think it gets magnified. That’s just not happening right now, so it’s easy to point the finger toward that being the issue. So that issue has to change in here and our play needs to be better.

Does it make it more difficult to focus?
JV: I can say I’ve been around it for a while, so I think it’s tougher to focus when things aren’t quite going your way. Not getting one pitch to get somebody out and not getting one hit to get somebody in, that stuff gets magnified. We’ve had a lot of uncharacteristic stuff happen to us over the last few days. It’s not the first time or the last time the team is going through something like this, and we just have to dig down deep.

Question about the ESPNdeportes.com report.
JV: Hearing about it for the first time right now doesn’t really give me a fair opportunity to respond. Regardless of how I or the organization feels, or how his teammates feel, for this team to be good we need to handle that in [the clubhouse]. I’m a believer in that and I’m a believer that this needs to be focused on the team playing well. To deal with that in a public matter, I’m not going to do that.


Going back a couple of days, here’s an interesting thought from Peter Gammons during a national ESPN radio interview about the mantra that agent Scott Boras and guys like Mike Lowell and Alex Cora were trying to hammer home to Planet Manny. So many surrounding the petulant outfielder tried to talk some sense into his dreadlocked head, but – in the end – he did his own thing as he has throughout his entire career.

Hasn’t Manny already basically earned the money that he’s been paid in his past contract?
PG: Other than walking out on his team for the list six weeks of the season in 2006 when they really needed him, he’s given $16 million over eight years which is exactly what they paid for. But there does come a point when whether or not the team wins or loses is important to your highest-paid player, and it’s not important to him; he has no interest and couldn’t care less.

There comes a point where credibility and reliability are important – and being forced to play, there is something really wrong with that. There comes a point where – he’s right – enough is enough. He’s not going anywhere because nobody will take him.

He ain’t making any $100 for four years, which is what he’s obsessed with right now. Because he’s basically trying to walk out on the contract he has left. They have to hope somehow that his agent Scott Boras can convince Manny that there is a connection between performance and pay, and the best place for him in a lineup is hitting behind David Ortiz, Pedroia and Youkilis and in front of Drew, and having five All-Stars in the lineup.

To put up the numbers to get the biggest contract, he’s in the right place. Now whether or not that’s going to happen and he’s going to play every day, that remains to be seen.