Hey, I know who can cowboy up, uh, I mean pony up more than $100 million to keep Manny Ramirez’s medicine chest stocked with sore throat lozenges for the next six years.

How about the fine folks at Fox? Heck, Manny couldn’t fare any worse as a third man in the broadcast booth that Bret Boone, the guy who never met five seconds of awkward silence he didn’t like.

You think I’m kidding.

Believe me, I’d trade Ramirez for Vladimir Guerrero straight-up in a heartbeat, and clearly that’s what the Red Sox’s spanking-new ownership and management team wanted to accomplish last week by placing its slugging superstar and clubhouse cancer on irrevocable waivers.

Manny was the highest-priced bait since Richard Dreyfuss in “Jaws.” He was a human carrot dangling in the cages of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and general manager Brian Cashman, promising a nutritious alternative to Guerrero, the five-tool, five-star free agent from Montreal.

Of course, the Bronx brain trust didn’t win this many world championships by being stupid, and so the Yankees joined 28 other franchises in an unequivocal response to Theo Epstein and Company.

No, thanks. We’re trying to quit.

Players of Ramirez’s ilk don’t last long in pinstripes. That’s why there are revolving doors at third base and in right field at Yankee Stadium, and why New York soon will shop second baseman Alfonso “Swing and a Miss” Soriano.

Do everything well, buy into the Yankees’ philosophy or wind up on the block more quickly than you can say Armando Benitez.

Manny wouldn’t make it through spring training in that environment. No way the Yankees were willing to handicap themselves in this winter’s free agent sweepstakes by lifting him at no discount whatsoever from the Red Sox payroll.

Know what, though? You can’t fault Sox management for trying. You can bet they aren’t done, either. If the team can gain similar value at a relative bargain price and unload at least half the village malcontent’s salary, it will pull the trigger on a deal before mid-February.

For the first time in my quarter-century of allowing the Red Sox to adversely affect my blood pressure, I’ll cast my lot with the guys in charge. They’ve got a gambling streak as wide as the Green Monster is tall, and it’s admirable.

Better yet, they have a plan. Imagine that. Contrary to the convoluted wisdom of certain talk radio-obsessed shut-ins, it doesn’t merely involve building a rotisserie team, either.

Character and behind-the-scenes contributions actually matter. Kevin Millar and Todd Walker are worth three, four, maybe five times as much as Manny Ramirez in that economy.

You’re never going to hear me say that I endorse the firing of Grady Little. He won 101 games this season. That’s at least a baker’s dozen more than Tony LaRussa won with the St. Louis Cardinals while undoubtedly handcuffing himself to the same almighty “numbers” that Epstein and Larry Lucchino fed Little and he allegedly eschewed.

Sometimes, though, having a plan means spitting in the face of convention. The way the new, presumably improved 21st-century Red Sox go about their business reminds me of the way Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick run the New England Patriots.

We all know how that relationship has unfolded thus far.

The prevailing philosophy: Nobody’s indispensable if it means making ourselves better. Sounds a lot like the shared vision of Steinbrenner, Cashman and Joe Torre to me.

You know what they say about imitation, flattery, et al. If imitation yields the Red Sox 1/26th the results the Yankees have enjoyed since 1920, I’ll be the happiest man on the planet.

Now if someone would just pick me up at the rate of $101.5 million over the next six years.

Kalle Oakes is sports editor and can be reached by e-mail at koakes@sunjournal.com.

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