98 MPH fastball, waist high over the middle of the plate and Ramirez just unloaded - turning a 3-2 lead into a 5-2 lead with one mechanically perfect swing that launched the baseball to straight-away centerfield on a line, not landing until it had cleared the canvas at Tropicana Field. It might be the hardest I have ever seen a baseball hit. With the confluence of the velocity of the fastball, the location of the pitch, Manny’s brute strength and flawless swing, Ramirez had, for a brief moment, achieved a hitter’s utopia of sort - everything came together for a moment. When he arrived back at the dugout, Bill Mueller had the exact same look on his face that Johanna and I did watching it - eyes wide open, eyebrows raised, mouths agape - “what sort of freak are you anyway?” Mueller seemed to ask with his facial expression as he high-fived Ramirez.

The Red Sox clinched the Wild Card last night and unlike last year’s raucous throwdown at Fenway and the neighboring bars, replete with the Kevin Millar oratory, this year’s club popped a little bubbly and patted each other on the backs but seemed to me to be a far more forward looking bunch. There were a slew of quotes I could choose from saying mostly the same thing but since we are all merely inhabitants in Manny’s world, here is his quote from this morning’s Globe…

“I think this is the year,” Ramirez said. “But we haven’t accomplished anything yet. We’re going to take it to the next level and see what happens.”

Manny, keep hitting like you are and I think I have a pretty good idea of what happens.