The big righthander was coming off a 20-7 season in which he posted a 2.74 ERA and made a reasonable case that he, not teammate Carlos Valle, should have been handed the Frick Nebraska award. April, however, brought showers…as in thunderstorms of base hits and homers. In five starts, Ramos went 0-2, posted a 7.00 ERA, and allowed six homers.
“It was pretty ugly,” he said. “My wife is superstitious, and she was throwing salt over every shoulder she could find, and walking around chairs, and starting to throw the stink juice into dinner. I think it was only a matter of time until she started looking for dead roosters to get into some pretty deep stuff.”
Ramos made headlines prior to last season by proposing to his bride-to-be (Rosetta) in a flashy process, and some have jokes that his brilliant season was a last gasp for freedom. The ceremony happened in December in her Haitian home city, and he arrived at spring training after an extended honeymoon. When things went haywire, the jokes ramped up. Until, of course, it got to the point where it was starting to draw some serious angst.
“One punch to the gut is funny,” a teammate said. “Two is just cruel.”
Luckily, the turning of the calendar seems to have done wonders for Ramos’s game.
May 1st saw him throw seven solid innings, striking out ten as he went on to beat Hawaii. Five days later he got nine grounders and struck out seven to beat Portland, and five days after that he struck out ten River Monsters in six and a third innings to push his record to 3-2, dropping the ERA to 4.75. On the way to respectability.
“I gotta admit that it’s a bit of a relief,” said the 26-year-old. “I’m not sure I wanted to see what Rosetta was going to do next.”
The news comes as music to the ears of Nine fans, who find the team struggling a bit at 21-15, in third place in the Heartland, and, horrifically, three games behind the Loserville Sluggers. If Ramos is back, perhaps the rest of the month will see a bit of a reversal of fate.
