Its Manny being Manny.

This spring, as with last spring and most likely every spring to come, Ramirez has weaseled his way out of a week of spring training. This year, he used the ever so general “family reasons”, which one teammate said was to attend to his mother in Florida while she had surgery (which may be true to some extent).

But then its a little weird to hear that he is also scheduled to be at a car auction in New Jersey on Saturday, because although I failed geography, I don’t believe that New Jersey is just around the corner from Florida. And then Manny sits around wondering why no one wants to trade for his enormous salary and ego. Its just puzzling, don’t you think?

What’s even worse is if he really did lie or exaggerate about needing to tend to his mom so he could get an appearance fee. The guy is loaded, and considering today’s MLB market, I think that someone’s bound to pony up and pay the man. Considering what Manny gets paid, and how much fans have to pay to see him, I think he can get his ass to spring training on time.

• Ramirez planned to attend car show instead of camp (AP)