NEW YORK (AP) – Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon on Thursday stood by a magazine interview in which he compared former teammate Manny Ramirez to cancer and said Boston made the right decision when it traded the slugger to the Los Angeles Dodgers last summer.

Papelbon was quoted in the April issue of Esquire as saying, “He was on a different train! And you saw what happened with that. We got rid of him, and we moved on without him.”

The story was posted on the magazine’s Web site Thursday.

“So Manny was tough for us,” Papelbon added. “You have somebody like him, you know at any point in the ballgame, he can dictate the outcome of the game. And for him not to be on the same page as the rest of the team was a killer, man! It just takes one guy to bring an entire team down, and that’s exactly what was happening.”

“Once we saw that, we weren’t afraid to get rid of him. It’s like cancer. That’s what he was. Cancer. He had to go. It sucked, but that was the only scenario that was going to work. That was it for us. And after, you could feel it in the air in the clubhouse. We got Jason Bay – Johnny Ballgame, plays the game right, plays through broken knees, runs out every ground ball – and it was like a breath of fresh air, man! Awesome! No question.”

In the Red Sox clubhouse before playing the Cardinals in Jupiter, Fla., on Thursday, Papelbon backed up his assertions.

“I’m not afraid to say it,” he said. “If it’s the truth and I believe it, I’ll say it.”

Papelbon also said he had not heard from teammates or anyone else asking him to soften his statements about Ramirez.

“Because I think they all know that’s the truth,” he said. “If I said something that was out of line, then yeah. But I don’t think I said anything that’s out of line. I spoke the truth.

“There’s no secrets here. So, I’m not coming up with some new big hidden secret that nobody knows about. This is something everybody’s been knowing about…and it is old news,” he added. “But I know those comments just came out today from a magazine (interview) that I did in the first of December. But there’s no secrets here. The writing is on the wall.”

Manager Terry Francona didn’t condone Papelbon’s remarks, while noting the closer usually says what’s on his mind.

“That’s Pap’s personality,” Francona said. “The one thing we don’t ever want is somebody criticizing their own teammates. They know that.”

Francona would have preferred that Papelbon kept his thoughts to himself.

“Pap is pretty open about how he feels about everything,” Francona said. “From my point of view, if I ever have something to say to a player, I’ll say it to him in my office.”

Ramirez was sent to Los Angeles on Aug. 31 as part of a three-team trade in which Boston received Bay from Pittsburgh. Ramirez became a free agent after the season, then agreed last week to a $45 million, two-year deal with the Dodgers.

“As an organization, we do what we think is in the best interests of our ballclub,” Francona said. “That’s what we did. That’s what we’ll continue to do. The moves we make, I think that speaks volumes enough.”

Papelbon said that while some players tried to talk to Ramirez about his behavior, he was not among them.

“Well, I think some guys on our team that maybe could talk to him,” Papelbon said. “Guys like me I can’t talk no sense into him. I think there’s other guys on this team that had a better opportunity at that than me.”

AP-ES-03-12-09 1646EDT


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