According to teammate Julian Tavarez, Manny Ramirez won’t report to spring training until the mandatory date of March 1.

AP / ELAINE THOMPSON

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Manny Ramirez’s 2006 season ended early, and his 2007 season will begin late.

Ramirez will not be in camp when position players report today, nor will he be in camp tomorrow for the physicals or Thursday for the first full-squad workout.

The Sox’ slugging, eccentric left fielder will arrive on March 1, said his friend and mouthpiece, pitcher Julian Tavarez, who said he spoke with Ramirez on Sunday.

Tavarez said that Ramirez’s mother had a health scare, involving surgery near her ribs. Though she’s fine now at home in Weston, Fla., about two hours from the Sox’ training facility, Ramirez told Tavarez he would be in camp on March 1, which happens to be the mandatory reporting date for all players under the sport’s union contract.

The Sox begin full-squad workouts Thursday and will open their exhibition schedule on Feb. 28.

Ramirez, who asked to be traded in the offseason, has two years remaining on his contract and is owed roughly $40 million by the Sox. He batted .321 with 35 homers and 102 RBI last year, but started only one game after Sept. 9 because he was bothered by soreness in his right knee.

Manager Terry Francona, meanwhile, said he had not heard from Ramirez, getting his news on the subject second-hand.

“I have no comment on what evidently transpired on the blogs,” said Francona after yesterday’s pitchers-and-catchers workout.

“That’s unfair because I haven’t talked to him. There’s a lot of ‘He said, she said.’ If someone calls and tells me something happens, it’s easier for me to comment than if his publicist, Julian [Tavarez], is saying things,” said Francona.

Tavarez said he didn’t think Ramirez was “crazy.”

“Manny’s smart. I would like to be crazy hitting 40 homers every year with 100 RBI, batting .300 and making $160 million. Let me be crazy like that,” said Tavarez.

“Manny doesn’t want to leave Boston. It’s a great city to play ball and he knows that,” said Tavarez. “It’s just Manny being Manny, giving [the media] something to write about.”

Tuck rules the roost

Bullpen and catching coach Gary Tuck had the six catchers in camp working on a few unusual drills yesterday.

During one of them, he had the six dressed in their gear and crouched in a semicircle, blocking baseballs in the dirt. Tuck fired the baseballs to the catchers using a pitching machine in random order.

Then he had the catchers take off their mitts and put their hands behind their backs, continuing the drills. This forced the catchers to focus on bending the upper body toward the ball at a 45-degree angle, using their chest protectors and even their masks to stop the ball and keep it in front of them.

Tuck also had the catchers using a glove that was barely larger than a mitten, tossing the ball to each other. As a catcher would receive the ball, he would begin his throwing motion, as if a runner were stealing second. This forced the catchers to watch the ball into the mitt and concentrate on the transfer of the ball from the glove to the throwing hand.

But who’s counting?

David Page, the Sox’ strength and conditioning coach has a new techno gadget for the players.

It’s a pedometer that attaches to the laces of the cleats. It records not only how many steps a player takes during the course of the training-camp day, but also how many calories he is burning off.

The device is wireless, sending the results to the Sox’ computers.

Man of his words

Catcher Jason Varitek was working on his Japanese yesterday. He received a text message from Chang-Ho Lee, a former assistant trainer for the Red Sox who was with the team when former Japanese League star Hideo Nomo pitched for Boston.

Lee also served as the translator for Sun-Woo Kim and Tomo Ohka when they were with the club.

Around the horn

There were fewer fans than normal for Sox workouts, especially given the fact schools are on vacation back home and schools here were closed yesterday because it was a federal holiday, Presidents’ Day. The cool start to the day — it was 39 degrees at 8 o’clock — may have had something to do with that . . . There are five catchers in camp besides Varitek, but Francona said that Doug Mirabelli, the personal catcher for knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, is the backup catcher. The others are being looked at in case either Varitek or Mirabelli gets hurt . . . Francona said it was too early to say if he would prefer two left-handers in the bullpen. Hideki Okajima would seem to have one spot, but veteran left-hander J.C. Romero, as well as lefties Javier Lopez and Craig Breslow, each of whom pitched out of the bullpen last year for Boston, also are in camp . . . Julio Lugo said he had seen David Ortiz in the Dominican Republic over the winter and that Ortiz looked to be in good shape. “He looked bananas,” is how Lugo put it.

skrasner@projo.com