There's something perversely fitting about the latest report that Manny is again looking to get out of Boston, all coming at a time when he has spent the last month or so essentially missing in action, a time when the Sox have limped through September like some defeated army coming home after a losing battle.

Twenty million a year for this?

Twenty million for someone who apparently doesn't even want to be here?

Think about the inherent absurdity of this.

Twenty million.

Roll that figure around on your tongue for a while. Feel how it tastes. Think about what it actually means. Not in baseball terms, where it all seems like Monopoly money, anyway. In the real world.

Want to know why all of the good seats at Fenway go for $90? Want to know why you can't take a family of four to Fenway anymore without having to take out a loan? Want to know why the cable bill always seems to be going up? Want to know how the entire experience of going to a ball game now too often seems like someone's got his hand in your pocket looking for your wallet?

Don't kid yourself. It's all interrelated. Players don't make millions of dollars in a vacuum, however much we want to think they do.

And if nothing else, Manny points out the fallacy of guaranteed contracts. Rest assured, if this were the NFL he wouldn't act this way, plain and simple. And if he did? No one would tolerate it. But it's not football, so Manny seems to glide through his baseball career like a kid at recess.

But don't misunderstand:

I don't blame Manny.

He didn't create the system. Nor did he sign himself to his ridiculous contract. Nor did he create the enabling climate that's been the Red Sox organization ever since he arrived. No, he didn't create this mess. He just benefits from it.

Manny doesn't always hustle to first base on a routine grounder?

No problem.

Manny too often flaunts the game's integrity in ways a Little Leaguer wouldn't be allowed to do?

No problem.

Manny gets special treatment?

That's no problem, either.

Just Manny being Manny, right?

That's the unbelievable excuse that long ago took on a life of its own, as if it somehow makes everything all better.

He long ago became the baseball equivalent of the beautiful girl, the one everyone always makes allowances for, the one who always operates under different rules, forever given the benefit of the doubt. That's Manny. He is a great hitter, so we not only allow him his trespasses, we defend them, too. As if his ability to hit a baseball gives him a free pass, exempt from the expectations we have come to demand from other athletes.

Any wonder why he long ago did what he wanted to?

Because that's what he does, no question about it.

And in doing so he points out the inherent absurdity of all of this.

So it's only perversely fitting that he now wants out, like an old sitcom we've all seen too many times before.

No matter that he's a fan favorite in Fenway. No matter that he has put up the kind of numbers in Fenway that arguably will one day have him in the Hall of Fame. No matter that part of David Ortiz's success occurs because Manny hits behind him, one of the best back-to-back combos in baseball history. No matter that so many of the Sox' faithful have made countless excuses for him, enabling him in ways parents do a spoiled child, each time hoping that this will be the last time.

His agent says he wants out.

He makes $20 million a year and he's not happy here.

Are we supposed to feel sorry for him?

You tell me.

And maybe he really has been hurt the last month or so. Who really knows? Maybe it's just coincidence that he got hurt when the Sox fell out of the race, staring at more than a month of garbage time.

The sad thing, though, is that there is doubt. Here is a great player, no longer a kid, and when he says he is too hurt to play too many people simply roll their eyes. Here is Manny, on the eve of another postseason, and once again his future is as up in the air as a windblown fly ball, Groundhog Day in cleats. Here is Manny, once again in the eye of the storm.

Here is Manny, once again in his own unique way pointing out how absurd this has become.

breynold@projo.com / (401) 277-7340