New Manny Being New Manny? Manny Ramirez and New Focus

I saw a tweet yesterday from Tim Ellsworth, author & news director at my alma mater, Union University.  It said the following:  "Manny Ramirez becomes a Christian? Hope this is genuine."  I was like "Huh?"

To give a little background for those who many not know.  Manny Ramirez is a baseball player.  In his time, a really good baseball player.  He played for the Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago White Sox & Tampa Bay Rays.  He had most of his success in Cleveland & Boston, including helping the Red Sox win 2 World Series in 2004 & 2007 with a little in L.A.  He was also known as a kinda eccentric player.  There was a phrase that followed him.  That phrase was "Manny being Manny".  When there was an off the wall news story, most sportscasters would say "Well it's Manny being Manny."  In time, that phrase seemed to overshadow his talent.

Something else that seemed to overshadow his talent was being busted by MLB for violating the drug policy.  The first time happened in 2009 and he lost 50 games.  After jumping around to the White Sox & the Rays in consecutive seasons with bad performances, Ramirez was busted again by MLB for violating the drug policy in 2011 just 5 games into the season for the Rays.  He faced a 100 game suspension if and when he returned to the big leagues.  Instead, Ramirez abruptly retired.  At that point, it seemed like a sad ending to a career of a player who had a lot of talent but his antics seemed to get in the way.

However, last fall, Ramirez went to MLB officials and wanted to be reinstated.  This reinstatement would come with the provision that he would serve a reduced suspension of 50 games (instead of 100) with whatever team signed him.  The Oakland A's ended up being that team.  He became eligible to join the A's yesterday.  Right now, he's at their AAA affiliate the Sacramento River Cats.

So I knew that he was in AAA & that at some point he could be called up if the A's felt like it.  But when I saw that tweet I had to find out about that story.  So I googled to see and came across a couple of articles.  One that was really interesting was one from the A's website, (there's a link to the article here).  Initially the article talks about Manny and his minor league stint.  But further down in the article, it talks about how he's changed as a person.  He cites his wife and his newfound faith in Christ as huge parts of that.

Several quotes that Ramirez said that stood out included:
"It's hard to be a Christian, because when God comes inside your heart, you don't do things that you used to.  Nobody can walk the perfect path, because nobody's perfect."
"I know a lot of people talk about the Hall of Fame, blah, blah, blah.  But you know something? The Bible says that it's better to be in the Book of Life. And that's where I want to be. If it [getting in the Baseball Hall of Fame] happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it's not a big deal.
"I'm going to give 100 percent.  If it [getting in the Baseball Hall of Fame] doesn't happen, I've got God, and I've got my family. That's all I want."

Personally, I have liked Manny Ramirez, especially when he was in Boston.  And I do hope that he's a follower of Jesus now.   Sometimes, people can be skeptical of people that say they've changed.  But the cool thing is that God can definitely do the changing.  Maybe now on Manny being Manny can instead be Manny being more like Jesus.