Tenorio: Will Manny talk? Close, but no cigar

Above me, Boston Red Sox batters were redirecting batting-practice pitches toward Lansdowne Street as rock ‘n roll music pulsated through the Fenway Park speakers. I was more interested in the man standing beside me in the corridor on Wednesday afternoon ? one Manny Ramirez.Yes, the same Manny Ramirez whose name had surfaced in trade talks this past weekend, when he said that he was tired of the Red Sox, and the team was tired of him. Trade speculation had infested the newspapers and the talk-radio circuit. The trade deadline was Thursday. I felt like Carl Bernstein as I turned to Ramirez. I’d even brushed up on my Spanish.”Hola, Manny,” I said.”No thank you, sir,” he replied.Strike one. Dare I continue? I did. I asked him in Spanish what he thought would happen the next day.”No thank you, sir.”Strike two. In this case, I would not get a chance to strike out against mighty Manny. The Red Sox left fielder rushed down the corridor. When he saw me still standing at the other end, he swore and indicated that I was nuts. Given his previous knocking of Red Sox traveling secretary Jack McCormick to the floor, and his tirade with teammate Kevin Youkilis, I felt I’d gotten off lucky.I also felt that, pre-profanity, Ramirez showed calmness and restraint amid the tension of trade talks. Shortly after I entered the Red Sox clubhouse at four p.m., he entered with David Ortiz, and the duo got a chance to sit down in a relatively relaxed setting. He didn’t seem rattled then, and he didn’t seem rattled when I approached him ? until the very end.Ramirez treated my interview request much like any big-league ballplayer might treat four pitches well outside the strike zone: He declined to offer anything. While I regret that he didn’t, it was his decision and I respect it.And yet I also wish Ramirez could have shown the coolness of a previous generation of Red Sox stars whom I never got to watch. After he got up from his seat beside Ortiz and left the clubhouse, a past great entered and chatted with Big Papi. It was Luis Tiant, who’d starred in both Cuba and the United States, earning lasting fame in Boston as a member of the 1975 World Series runner-up and the starter in Game Six. Yesterday, El Tiante entered with a pack of cigars and showed them to Ortiz.”Quieres cigar?” El Tiante asked. “You want some?”Manny, if you could have shown me some of Tiant’s approachability, I wouldn’t have to write this column off as “Close, but no cigar.”Richard Tenorio is an Item sports copy editor.