Manny Ramirez is back in baseball, this time on the other side of the world.
The 48-year-old Dominican, a Boston Red Sox legend and 12-time All-Star, is scheduled to start the season on Thursday, wearing the Sydney Blue Sox uniform in the Australian Baseball League.
Sydney manager Shane Barclay said Ramirez, a two-time World Series winner, prepared a conscience for the campaign.
Charisma
His team opens the season against the Melbourne Aces, defending champions.
“We knew there would be a show with Manny, but that was also a pleasure,” Barclay said on Wednesday.
“He has had a huge acceptance and I just swing like a man he is 48 years old. He is an incredible athlete “, he emphasized.
“He has the legitimacy to play, he wants to do it and he is committed in all aspects,” he said.
“He’s going to hit some homers this season,” said the leader of Sydney’s Medias Azules.
In 2009, 50 games were suspended for violating baseball anti-drug policies.
The Major Leagues office notified him of another offense and sentenced him to 100 games, but the player appealed and the penalty was reduced to 50 games.
Ramirez is in Sydney for New York Yankees baptism coach Rachel Balkovek, who accepted the spot while there is no Major League season.
Balkovec is the first woman to have performed such a task in the Major Leagues.
The injuries affected Sydney at the end of the previous campaign.
The team did not qualify for the playoffs, having won just five of their last 22 games.
A baseball globetrotter
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He was the MJV of the 2004 World Series, in which the Red Sox broke the 86-year-old sequence without being crowned. He has played in the minor leagues of the United States, as well as in China and Japan, since finishing his career. to the Majors.