The inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the Manny Ramirez trade is essentially over, probably after a few phone calls. It's going nowhere, because it has no chance to go anywhere.
I haven't spoken to one person in the game who isn't appalled by how Ramirez handled his last days with Boston, and just about all of them understand why the Red Sox felt compelled to trade a Hall of Fame-caliber hitter.
But really, if there were going to be any serious conversation in the commissioner's office about dealing with a player who was seemingly sabotaging his team, it needed to take place as the conflict occurred -- on the Friday night he sat out of the lineup against the Yankees and came back from the hospital with clean MRIs on both of his knees. If, at that point, the commissioner had either flown to Boston or summoned Manny to New York to speak directly to him about the integrity of his actions, with the implicit threat of official action thick in the air, then this would have had a chance to impact the course of events. "It would have given the Red Sox some leverage in the situation," said a high-ranking baseball executive.
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Buster Olney
