BOSTON — Is this October’s Manny Machado tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing besides the $300 million-plus he’ll bank this winter? Or can the All-Star really damage his impending free agency with his conduct on the game’s biggest platform?
Too early to say, primarily because this grand marketing experiment hasn’t ended yet. To the contrary, it’s just getting started.
If the Dodgers shortstop created new National League Championship Series drama with the Brewers and their fans, he arrived at Fenway Park having already laid an impressive foundation of rancor with Red Sox Nation. The impending free agent couldn’t have found a better final exam if he had planned this World Series himself. Before he makes his Fall Classic debut Tuesday night, Machado surely will get greeted with a tornado of boos that will make his Miller Park haranguing feel like a lullaby. This Series will throw everything it has at Machado as he tries to convince the Yankees and other potential suitors he’s worth a mega-investment.
“That’s old history,” Machado said Monday of his tensions with the Red Sox, in one of his more substantive quotes during a 30-plus-minute media session. “Obviously, I played here quite a bit. I’ve got a lot of games here. I’m familiar with a lot of stuff around the ballpark. Familiar with the team. So I think I’ve got a bit of an advantage to help my team win the games here.
“I’m a Dodger now. I’m here to win the World Series. And that’s all that matters right now.”
Machado’s 5 ¹/₂ years with the Orioles loom large here, most of all thanks to an April 2017 slide — late and spikes up — into Dustin Pedroia that damaged the iconic Red Sox second baseman’s left knee. While Pedroia grinded through most of last season, he played in only three games this year and will be a spectator this week as he continues to recover from October 2017 surgery on the knee.
“When you take out a captain, a leader of a team, that’s not going to sit well with anybody,” Red Sox reliever Matt Barnes, who retaliated against Machado last year by throwing at his head and drawing a suspension, told reporters on Monday. “It kind of is what it is. You move on. I don’t see anything happening, I really don’t, but it doesn’t mean that we’ve forgotten about it.”
In the wake of the Brewers’ Christian Yelich calling Machado a dirty player after Machado kicked Milwaukee first baseman Jesus Aguilar on a groundout, Barnes said, “Yeah …. maybe” that’s a sentiment shared around the industry.
Pedroia denied he still holds a grudge against Machado, saying, “What’s this, high school? I’m a grown-ass man.” Although when a reporter asked whether that slide led to his current woes, he said, “Yeah, that didn’t help, I’ll tell you that.”
Other Red Sox declined to go as far, with Game 1 starter Chris Sale (who also retaliated against Machado last year) saying, “We have bigger things to worry about now on both sides” and first baseman Steve Pearce, Machado’s Orioles teammate for four years, vouching for the superstar’s character and lamenting, “I don’t like to see fans booing him and the way that he’s playing, because he’s better than that.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Machado, whom he has managed since mid-July, “I don’t think the attention that he’s receiving is affecting him. I think he just has a good way to channel that for the positive.”
Dodgers veteran Chase Utley, who can speak of being loathed by an entire fan base, said he has offered counsel to Machado.
“The fact that I played in New York a lot, the fact that I’ve been booed there a lot, made it a little bit easier to take,” Utley said, referring to the reaction when he broke Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada’s right leg while trying to break up a double play. “But it’s not that comforting when 50,000 people are booing you. But it is what it is. You try to stay focused, try to tune them out as best as possible. At the end of the day, you want to stick with your strengths and not get out of that comfort zone.”
Machado did his best to dance around these topics, repeatedly leaning on the mantra, “I’m here to win a World Series ring.” He did say, “I hustle. I run down the line,” which directly contradicted his words and actions from the NLCS, and he oddly opined, “Everyone has their own different personalities in the game. Not everybody can be robots. I know MLB is trying to make us robots, but we’re just going to go out there and play our game.”
Actually, MLB is perfectly happy to cast a high-profile villain for its jewel event. Machado clearly has accepted the challenge. Will he prevail? We’ll find out twice: Once in a week or so, and again when he signs his next contract.
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