Kudos to the Champion of the West for coming up with a "cowboy up" sighting outside of Kevin Millar. Apparently, Vincent D'Onofrio's character used the phrase in an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent from last season. Millar should send him a signed baseball.

On his blog, the Champ then asked if Manny Ramirez was giving new meaning to the term, and I think he is. Clearly, the only way Manny is cowboying up right now is by heading to the barn dance for some refreshments.

(For those of you who have not heard, Manny was apparently too sick to play this weekend, but was healthy enough to engage in some level of social interaction with some friends on the Yankees - a team he apparently would like to play for after he's done with the Sox.)

I'm not sure about the latter part, but I do wonder if Manny will get the first part of things sooner than he thinks. It doesn't take an English lit grad student to read between the lines of the comments coming from Manny's teammates, all of which suggest they'd prefer a teammate who was willing to put it on the line as crunch time starts.

Manny had the same thing as Pedro, but not as bad. Pedro tried to pitch this weekend and was clearly not fully recovered, as the Yankees hit him pretty good. Pedro went to Chicago early to get some rest before his planned start against the White Sox. Manny, meanwhile, has been with the team but apparently needs to gargle more or something before his throat problem allows him to play again. For what it's worth, he may be back in the lineup today.

Expect Theo Epstein to work out some sort of SABR-infused trade over the winter meetings.