Unless you’ve been holed up in a secret cave near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, you’ve undoubtedly heard about Manny Ramirez shoving Red Sox traveling secretary Jack McCormick to the ground in a spat over an unreasonable ticket request.

Here’s the story from Sean McAdam.

My take on the situation:

First and foremost, Manny was being childish.

Making a demand and then throwing a tantrum when the demand is deemed unreasonable is the act of a child.  But, we all knew about these tendencies from day one, right?  Sometimes the childish behavior manifests itself in cute, fuzzy media-friendly episodes, like Manny wearing his MP3 player in the field or Manny high-fiving fans during a live play.   Alas, sometimes it’s not a story we want to hear about.  Sometimes it’s a trade demand, sometimes it’s a clubhouse spat with Curt Schilling or Kevin Youkilis, or even Jack McCormick.

Which brings me to my next point: the nature of the scuffle/shove/whatever it was.  None of us know.  Only Manny, McCormick, and the handful of witnesses know how this all really went down.  McAdam’s story was purposefully vague, as he wasn’t there when it happened.  We do not know what was said between the two, we do not know how hard  McCormick fell or if the force from the shove was the sole cause of McCormick’s fall.

What I do know is that a lot of people are focusing on the guy’s age (early sixties), when it really shouldn’t matter.  From what I hear, the guy isn’t exactly a helpless weakling, even though I’ve heard some talk radio callers liken the guy to Tiny Tim (crutch, not ukulele). Even still, Manny was wrong to put his hands on another human being.

That being said, the nature of the reactions from McCormick and the Red Sox organization leads me to believe that the situation wasn’t as volatile as we may have thought.  Manny apologized, McCormick shrugged it off, Terry Francona called it a closed case, and that’s it.  Had Manny Ramirez really “attacked” this guy, I really don’t think we’d be seeing such a vanilla reaction from the rest of the team, including Manny’s teammates.

My guess is (and this is only a guess with no evidence to back it up) that Manny “took care” of Jack McCormick after this whole fiasco.  Of course Manny apologized, but I’m also thinking an exchange of assets of some sort accompanied that apology.   This is the way things are sometimes handled in the clubhouse.

If McCormick is fine with it, we should also be fine with it.