Charlie Manuel Was at WWE Raw Last Night
A few years back, Philly Mag ran a piece about Charlie Manuel arguing he was a misunderstood idiot savant. Sniff all you want at his tongue-tied, backwater verbal stylings, Matthew Teague wrote, but there’s zen here in this man.
Manuel tells the truth, and sticks to the essence: When a player performs poorly, Manuel tells him so. When someone performs well, likewise. His straightforward manner, regardless of stuttering or grammatical errors, stops the churn of guesswork in a player’s head. All those distractions go out — out into the black void — and all that remains is the game itself.
That’s all well and good, but there’s nothing particularly zen about hanging ringside at the Wells Fargo Center where some TV stills revealed him to be last night, enjoying WWE Raw. Look, it’s like we always knew, he’s more Nuke LaLoosh than Crash Davis. Besides, the wrestling appears to be affecting his work ethic. Here’s a tidbit from wrestling great Jerry “The King” Lawler, speaking to a reporter earlier this year:
Charlie Manuel is a big WWE fan. One time I was at the park and walked by his office. He had a bunch of scouts in his office, saw me walk by and stopped me. He kicked out all of the scouts from his office, sat down in his chair and wanted to talk about a beating that Stone Cold (Steve Austin) had taken the night before.
