There’s an old phrase from a 1903 play by George Bernard Shaw, long used to denigrate and devalue educators, which suggests that people who master a skill are unable to pass their knowledge along to others:
“Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”
Manny Ramirez, the legendary MLB hitter and two-time World Series champion, was hopeful about a year ago that the Boston Red Sox would give him the chance to prove that he can do both. Now he’s letting the rest of the league know of his ambitions.
“I could teach it. I could teach it,” Ramirez said during a Sept. 30 appearance on the “Foul Territory” podcast. “I just need the opportunity.”
Legendary Slugger Manny Ramirez Hopes to Return to MLB as a Hitting Coach
There’s no question that Ramirez was able to do amazing things with a bat in his hand, and despite his connection to performance enhancing drugs, which has kept him out of the Hall of Fame, Ramirez undoubtedly has Hall-of-Fame credentials. Considered one of the top right-handed sluggers to ever play, Ramirez finished his 19-year career with a slash line of .312/.411/.585 and a .996 OPS, and he ranks 15th all-time with 555 home runs.
But a lesser-known fact about Ramirez is that as he got into the later years of his career, Ramirez grew to enjoy working with younger players to help them with their hitting concerns, which Erik Kratz pointed out during the “Foul Territory” interview.
“Why aren’t you a hitting coach?” Kratz asked. “Because I talked to different guys, young guys with the Dodgers when you were there [from 2008-2010] – Delwyn Young, uh, [Andy] LaRoche, who else did they have there, Russell Martin – like all those guys, they said you were probably the best hitting coach that they had on the team.”
Well, perhaps that conversation lit a fire under Ramirez. Because according to a Thursday post on X (formerly Twitter) from Jon Heyman of The New York Post, Ramirez “is getting word out to all 30 teams he’d love to serve as an MLB hitting coach.”
“He wants to bring his greatness to teach the young guys,” Heyman quoted Ramirez’s agent, Hector Zepeda, as saying.
Manny Ramirez Makes Desire Known to MLB Teams After Talks With Boston Went Nowhere
Apparently that greatness was made available to the Red Sox around the end of the 2024 season, but their conversation didn’t lead anywhere, and in late October, the team hired Dillon Lawson to be an assistant hitting coach under Pete Fatse.
“I spoke to Boston last year and we were talking a little bit,” Ramirez said.
“But then we never got back, you know, like getting serious about it, and so they never get back to me. So I never, you know, went back to them to see if [there] was really an opportunity for me to teach these kids how to hit, because sometimes, you know, you see all these kids with all this talent and they seem kind of lost.”
And despite the changes in pitching since Ramirez retired, with so many pitchers now hitting upper 90s and past 100 with regularity, Ramirez said he is confident that he could help those young hitters find their way.
“Remember, pitching is pitching,” he said. “Doesn’t matter [if the pitcher throws] 100, 85, 95. If you got that technique, you’re gonna hit. I got the best example: David Ortiz. His last year, he hit better than when he was young. He didn’t change his mechanics. So, why change something that is not broken?”
But the key, Ramirez said, is to become a hitter first, and a power hitter second, which is something the MLB legend said he feels is no longer recognized by today’s young players.
“Just try to figure out what kind of hitter you are, and then you could develop as a power hitter, because that’s what happened to me, to Alex Rodriguez, to David Ortiz,” Ramirez said. “We became a hitter, and when we start getting older, then we understood the [strike] zone and start hitting home runs. Not like these kids these days that, they’re trying to become a power hitter when they don’t know the zone, and they don’t know what kind of hitter they are.”
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