And when Ramirez, pinch hitting with two outs in the eighth inning of a tie game, bounced a ground-ball single over the head of Minnesota pitcher Juan Rincon to deliver Edgar Renteria with the deciding run in a 4-3 victory over the Minnesota Twins, then thrust his helmet skyward in salute from first base, whatever ill will Ramirez had engendered with his peculiar behavior in the last week seemed long forgotten.
''I think he saw the best of Boston in about a 10-minute span," said Sox manager Terry Francona, who had kept Ramirez out of the lineup for a second straight day because of a two-day hiatus designed, he had said, to allow the player to ''clear his head."
''I think anybody would want to be here. It's hard not to get chills when that stuff is happening. That's one of the most electric baseball atmospheres you'll ever see."
Enough of demands to be traded, refusals to play, rumors of deals that would have made him a New York Met, all of which had roiled Ramirez, the clubhouse, and Red Sox fandom in the days leading up to yesterday's 4 p.m. deadline.
''This is the place to be," Ramirez crowed to NESN reporter Eric Frede as he left the field. ''Manny being Manny, it's great, man."
Yes, he described himself, for the first time in memory, with the same phrase that so many others -- admirers, detractors, teammates, bosses -- have employed to describe a character alternately confounding and charming, maddening and marvelous.
''Is this how we drew it up?" deadpanned Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein, who had spent many hours in the previous three days working the phones on various trade scenarios with the New York Mets, before ultimately deciding that no offer made by the Mets, either by themselves or in a proposed three-way deal with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, was sufficient to part with Ramirez.
''Now we get to keep the best righthanded hitter in the game," said catcher Jason Varitek, expressing his approval that the Sox had elected to make their peace with Ramirez rather than rousting him from the roster.
