Manny Ramirez completes 13 home run trots Sunday after mundane activities

BOSTON, MA — Even before the door to the mailbox swung shut, Manny Ramirez knew his letter was gone.

The slugger raised his arms directly in the air, let out a little yell, and took two giant hops, before slowly jogging away from the mailbox and down Charles St. on Sunday morning.

This was just one of 13 spontaneous, exuberant celebrations that Ramirez launched into Sunday, in preparation for the evening’s crucial Game 7 against Cleveland.

“I’m just working at Kinko’s, you know, helping people with the copier, delivering the occasional FedEx package, the usual,” said Diane Martinez, 23, of Newton, Mass. “All of a sudden Manny Ramirez walks in! I think he’s soooooo hot, so I went over to help him. He was trying to make a scan of his driver’s license.”

Martinez said she and Ramirez spoke in Spanish while she showed him how to work the scanner and the automatic credit card machine. She said Ramirez behaved like a perfect gentleman, until he went to “the automatic receipt thingamajig.”

“Manny put his card in the machine, then waited for a second,” she said. “When the machine spit out his receipt, he grabbed it, took three or four sort-of goose steps and then launched into a jog around the store. When he got back to the front, he jumped with both feet onto the counter, blew a kiss to God, and then ran out of the store.”

Martinez was not the only Boston-area resident to witness such a display.

“That’s nothing,” said Jim Jennings, manager of the local 7-11. “Absolutely nada. Manny walked into my store to get a Slurpee. He decided he wanted a large, and he did something really smart, I gotta say – he put the lid on first, so that he had that extra open dome to get a few extra ounces of slurp. Anyway, he wanted to mix black cherry and Coke – great choices, both, and a nice blend – and takes his sweet time filling up the cup. He literally got every single cubic centimeter that he could get into the cup. It was an absolute work of SlurpArt, down to the little peak sticking out the top of the cup. Incredible.

“But then, as soon as he finished, he fired the cup straight into the air. The thing exploded all over the freaking place, and then he let out this enormous roar, jogged all the way around the chips aisle, smacked the ice cabinet with both hands, and then sprinted back toward the counter. Then he launched himself at me for a giant bear hug. It took me an hour and a half to clean the Slurpee off the ceiling, but hey – it was worth it for those few seconds in his loving embrace. Manny being Manny, right? Gotta love it!”

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!