Jonathan Papelbon Rips Man-Ram

It's pretty much common knowledge at this point that Manny Ramirez and the Boston Red Sox did not get along at the end of his tenure there. But none of the Sox players really ever came out and put it into words, until closer Jonathan Papelbon came out firing in the April version of Esquire Magazine. Check out these quotes from Paps:

“He was on a different train! And you saw what happened with that. We got rid of him, and we moved on without him."

“So Manny was tough for us. 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.”

Candid, sure. Surprising? No. But interesting to hear, to say the least. What do you think? Feel free to post a comment.