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Papelbon: Manny Was Like A Cancer

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The Associated Press

Published: March 13, 2009

NEW YORK - Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon on Thursday stood by a magazine interview in which he compared former teammate Manny Ramirez to cancer and said Boston made the right decision when it traded the slugger to the Los Angeles Dodgers last summer.

Papelbon was quoted in the April issue of Esquire as saying, "He was on a different train! And you saw what happened with that. We got rid of him, and we moved on without him."

The story was posted on the magazine's Web site Thursday.

"So Manny was tough for us," Papelbon added. "You have somebody like him, you know at any point in the ballgame, he can dictate the outcome of the game. And for him not to be on the same page as the rest of the team was a killer, man! It just takes one guy to bring an entire team down, and that's exactly what was happening."

"Once we saw that, we weren't afraid to get rid of him. It's like cancer. That's what he was. Cancer. He had to go. It sucked, but that was the only scenario that was going to work. That was it for us. And after, you could feel it in the air in the clubhouse. We got Jason Bay - Johnny Ballgame, plays the game right, plays through broken knees, runs out every ground ball - and it was like a breath of fresh air, man! Awesome! No question."

In the Red Sox clubhouse before playing the Cardinals in Jupiter on Thursday, Papelbon backed up his assertions.

"I'm not afraid to say it," he said. "If it's the truth and I believe it, I'll say it."

Papelbon also said he had not heard from teammates or anyone else asking him to soften his statements about Ramirez.

"Because I think they all know that's the truth," he said. "If I said something that was out of line, then yeah. But I don't think I said anything that's out of line. I spoke the truth."

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