The following piece was written by  CHRIS YAMAOKA, our resident Dodger fan and legal adviser.  It just so happens, he’s an awesome writer to boot.  Enjoy his piece.  It’s a goodie, as always.

So, Manny is back with the Dodgers.  If you follow sports at all, you read the story.  Story, singular, because every sportswriter appears to have written the same one: they agreed to a two year, $45 million dollar contract, which was essentially the same deal that Boras had just rejected.  Something about deferred payments; the negotiations took four months; words like “acrimonious” and “contentious;” Manny being Manny; the end.

So maybe it’s not surprising that a lot of people have asked me whether I hold it against Manny for taking so long to sign.  Whether I’m worried that he’s going to quit on the Dodgers like he quit on the Red Sox.  I guess it makes sense, because, close your eyes and think about the end of Manny’s tenure with the Red Sox.  What do you see?  The same sequence that SportsCenter burned into all of our minds.  He hits a ground ball, but he doesn’t run it out (he’s lazy!).  He misplays that fly ball, falls down, rolls around for a while, finally pulls it out from behind his back (quitter!).  What a terrible person.  Theo Epstein does not approve (look at him, shaking his well-groomed head).  Manny quit on his team; he only cares about himself and his money.  That’s the story, and it’s so easy to remember: it’s just Manny being Manny, man.

But it’s not that simple.  Manny was being Manny (don’t get me wrong; you can certainly say that when you make as much money as he does, and are fortunate enough to get to play this game that we all revere for a living, you shouldn’t be rolling around the outfield while a ball is in play; I wouldn’t disagree).  But most people forget a big part of the story: that Boras was being Boras, and Boston was being Boston.

Things started to go wrong when the Red Sox declined to exercise its team option for 2009.  That’s just asking for a disaster, because it puts the ball squarely in the hands of Scott Boras.  And, as they say, Scott Boras’s hands are the devil’s playthings.  And since Boras wasn’t Manny’s agent for his last contract, he doesn’t get any money if Manny goes back to Boston.  So the Blagojevich light goes off in Boras’s head: he’s got this thing and it’s f-ing golden, and he’s not giving it up for f-ing anything.  Manny’s gotta sign elsewhere.

And Boston’s cool with it, because they want to increase their gritty-white-dudes-with-gross-facial-hair quotient.  Luckily, they own the cable station, the newspaper, the radio station and, I’m pretty sure, several analysts at ESPN (I just looked it up and Peter Gammons is not, as it turns out, a Red Sox employee — who would have known?).  And since everyone else who covers baseball tends to love to hate people who don’t run out ground balls, it’s almost too easy.  They already know that Red Sox Nation will swallow it.  If they could forget about their beloved Nomah, they’ll certainly forget Manny.

It’s all to say: the story of Manny leaving Boston is probably not as simple as most people think it is.  It’s not as if he just decided he wanted more money and quit playing.  (If you judge quitting by performance on the field, I kind of hope Manny quits on the Dodgers, and gives quitting lessons to all the young guys.  In July, while he was quitting, his OPS was 1.060, better than anyone else on the team.)  Theo Epstein (who, remember, actually did quit on the Red Sox once upon a time) got annoyed at him, Boston decided it didn’t want him, Boras got in his ear, and even the fans ultimately turned on him.  The situation blew up, and Manny certainly wasn’t without blame, but it’s not a simple story of greed and disrespect.  It’s at least worth asking: who really quit on whom?

To be honest, I can’t be sure that nothing bad will happen between Manny and LA, especially as long as ol’ Blago-Devil-Hands is in the picture.  But Manny and LA are a good fit, and not just because they’re both “laid back,” as seems to be the orthodox sportswriter line.  If you polled casual sports fans, most would probably tell you that Manny is a lazy player who just happens to be a gifted hitter.  But if you ask teammates past and present, they’ll tell you that no one works harder than Manny, that he studies, sets up and, yes, actually outsmarts pitchers on a regular basis.  Similarly, if you polled people around the country, they’d tell you that LA doesn’t care about sports.  But if you actually go there, it turns out that the LA sports fan isn’t the guy you see checking his Blackberry courtside at Staples.  He’s fat, shirtless, drunk and screaming his head off in the right field pavillion at Dodger Stadium.  He’s going to cheer for Manny whether he hits it out or grounds to third, and he really doesn’t care what Theo Epstein thinks.  And now, finally, he can put on that blue Manny wig he bought during the euphoria of last August.  Manny’s back, and we couldn’t be happier.