Welcome Back, Manny

Yesterday the Red Sox honored the 2004 World Series Championship team with a pre-game ceremony. I didn't get to watch it until today (I'm a little behind in watching the games, although I know they won again tonight. Yay!), and it was quite nice to see a lot of the players that I haven't seen in a long time. A good chunk of players and coaches who were part of the team during the 2004 season were introduced one by one.

They showed highlights of the player before introducing him and I thought it was a well done ceremony. It brought back a lot of flashbacks for me personally as the 2004 team is one of my favorites of all time. There were a few notables missing, Mark Bellhorn was the most glaring to me. Obviously Francona wasn't there, nor was Dave Roberts and Bill Mueller (although they did appear together in a recorded statement).

I was most interested in seeing Manny. I have no problem admitting I was (and I guess I still am) a huge Manny Ramirez fan. He came out of the door in the Green Monster (paying homage to the time he disappeared in there during a mound meeting and came out just in time for the pitch) to a huge ovation and threw out the first pitch (which was intercepted by Johnny Damon). I thought that was cool because even all these years later, seeing a clip of Manny dive for that 10 foot relay throw by Damon still makes me laugh.

One of the things that separates the 2004 team from the other two championship teams was the personality...and one of the biggest characters was Manny. So for your viewing pleasure, here are (courtesy of ESPN), some of the best of "Manny being Manny".