Maybe Red Sox fans are going to miss Manny Ramirez, now the Dodgers’ left fielder, but the main players in the Boston print journalism community are deeply satisfied that he is gone.

Boiling down their commentary, it comes out as something like this: Manny was a cancer that the Red Sox couldn’t possibly live with, that had to be removed.

Here are some of the links:

We’ll start with Dan Shaughnessy, perhaps Boston’s best-known sports columnist. He cites Manny’s imploding attitude and unwillingness to get over himself, and mentions his “ego-driven wallet measuring.”

Nick Cafardo of the Globe writes that, “Obviously, the hope is that this is addition by subtraction, that the bad karma that had seeped into the Sox clubhouse has been exorcised …” in a piece that analyzes the trade and justifies what appears to be the low return the Red Sox got for a cleanup hitter.

In this double-bylined Globe piece, which includes a photo of the Red Sox team store advertising Manny gear at “50 percent off” … it is noted that the Globe’s website received 1.6 million hits in the time around the trade … and the reporters also seem to have little trouble finding fans who are happy Manny is gone.

Over at the Boston Herald, columnist Gerry Callahan goes “Dirty Harry” on Manny, whose departure clearly has made his day. Callahan calls Manny a “hard-hitting half-wit” who “was born with the ability to put a bat on ball better than most mortals, but that’s where his virtues end. He doesn’t play the game right. Too often he doesn’t play the game hard. He cares about his contract and his hair and not much else.”

Callahan ends by writing that the Dodgers, a “team formerly known as “Dem Bums” just got the biggest bum of them all.”

Another Herald columnist, Tony Massarotti, rues that the Red Sox caved in to the antics of “the maddening man-child” and suggests Ramirez is now out on a two-month audition with the Dodgers to see if he can land one more monstrous contract.

Herald beat writer Rob Bradford transcribed Manny-critical remarks from injured Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. He quotes Schilling as saying, via radio, “At the end of the day you’re taking the field with a guy who doesn’t want to play with you, doesn’t want to be there.”

Peter Gammons, the eminence gris of Boston baseball writers, now works for ESPN, and he trashes Manny in the opening paragraphs of an espn.com “Insider” piece (that requires money to be read en toto).

Writes Gammons: “… the way the past month had gone, there was no chance — none, zilch, nada — that Boston could make the playoffs with Ramirez on the team. In his mind, he had completed his obligation for the guaranteed $168 million the Red Sox paid him, and he was waiting to go on the market and collect the $100 million over the next four seasons he believes he is going to get, which would pay him through the age of 40.

“He insulted ownership and everyone in authority, and one player who really cares for Ramirez said he knew Ramirez could sit the last two months, collect his final $7 million and ride off into the $100 million sunset. The Red Sox knew that, as well. They already had threatened him with an unpaid suspension, but in a world in which the union fights for those who don’t work, the last two months were going to be a living hell of sit-down strikes, followed by suspensions. It would have been a half-season of what the past two weeks have been, namely a choke hold on the team’s baseball culture.”
Jayson Stark of espn.com suggests the Dodgers are “winners” in the trade-deadline game, which is the thrust of his piece, but writes that “it won’t be all good. We know that. Not when you have a slightly whacked-out man on a shameless money mission. Not when the manager has to figure out how to play five ‘regular’ outfielders on one roster. And not, certainly, when Manny puts a glove on his hand.”

The L.A.-area media seem to be cautiously optimistic. At least the Dodgers did something.

In our view, of course, that something is very wrong. And I find it telling that those who watched Manny Ramirez most closely the past eight seasons — Boston journalists — seem to be unanimous in applauding his departure.