Thu, Mar 02, 2006 page19

• MLB players spurn `Classic' ahead of season in the US

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  George Steinbrenner may be the Ugly American of the World Baseball Classic, but he has company. Manny Ramirez is the Ugly Dominican, and Hideki Matsui is the Ugly Japanese.

  Steinbrenner, the principal owner of the Yankees, hasn't forbidden any of his players to participate in the inaugural tournament, which begins Friday in Tokyo, but his players are aware of his preference for them to skip it.

  To their credit, Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Johnny Damon and Bernie Williams have ignored his wishes and plan to play.

  Steinbrenner abstained when the owners overwhelmingly approved the international tournament, so he had already made his feelings known. He wants to make sure that if any of his players break a leg, they do it for the Yankees and not for Team USA or any of the other national teams.

  In addition, Steinbrenner wants his well-paid players to focus on preparing for a season that will culminate in a World Series championship. If the Yankees don't win, he will surely blame the World Baseball Classic for distracting his stars and diverting their focus.

  If not for Steinbrenner, other members of the Yankees might have played, including Jorge Posada, Gary Sheffield, Randy Johnson and Wang Chien-ming (王建民) of Taiwan.

  "I don't want to push it; I don't want to get the team mad," said Posada, whom the Yankees asked baseball to exclude.

  Matsui might or might not belong in that group. He announced his decision not to play early on, saying it was important for him to concentrate on winning a championship with the Yankees. It mattered less to him that he was insulting Sadaharu Oh, the renown Japanese player who is the Japanese team's manager. Honor is big in Japan, but Matsui evidently doesn't mind dishonoring Oh.

  The only person Ramirez honors is himself. No more selfish player probably exists, unless his name is Barry Bonds. At least Bonds has a good excuse for sitting out the Classic. He is trying to get his right knee in shape to play a 162-game season, and that might not be an easy task for a knee that was operated on three times last year.

  Unlike Bonds and many others who have opted out of the Classic, Ramirez has no injury to rehabilitate or pamper. He is selfish Manny being selfish Manny.

  For his own reasons, Ramirez wanted to arrive at Boston's spring-training camp Wednesday, a day after the mandatory reporting date. The Red Sox took advantage of his request and agreed to it in exchange for a concession from him: He would stay in camp and not join the Dominican Republic team in Orlando, Florida.

  Before that request to the Red Sox was known, Gene Orza, who as the union's chief operating officer has been a primary moving force behind the Classic, tried to make excuses for Ramirez by lumping him in with injured players.

  During a conference call for the Classic last week, Orza said some members of the news media had failed to distinguish between "a player who feels he can't play because of an injury, or he was not up to the level of play yet, and the guy who simply doesn't want to play simply because he doesn't want to play."

  Orza added, "Manny feels he's not in shape to play."

  But if Ramirez wanted to play, he could have begun working out Feb. 23, the date his Red Sox teammates began working out in Fort Myers, Florida. Or he could have started working out earlier on his own, as other players did, and then he would have been in shape to play. He would not have needed a high-ranking union official to make excuses for him.

  Ramirez and Matsui are not the only players who have dropped out, but there are not as many dropouts as the Classic's critics in the news media would have us believe. Several teams are loaded with outstanding major leaguers.

  Sure, the Dominican team would benefit from having Ramirez in the lineup, but it is still loaded offensively.
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