Pedro Martinez’s excellent-sounding book is full of Manny Ramirez stories, like the time the Red Sox slugger took fashion advice from “the three little midgets in [his] head.” And yet, some gems didn’t make it into the book, like the time Ramirez spiked the clubhouse booze with Viagra.


On Late Night with Seth Meyers last night, Martinez told the story of the Red Sox’s 2004 World Series run, when players would take a shot ahead of playoff games. The Score has the transcription:

Boston players would take turns introducing their favorite shots prior to games when Ramirez presented his teammates with a concoction called mamajuana - a mixture of gin, honey, wine and medicine root. There was, of course, one other special ingredient. “(Ramirez) put three 100mg Viagras in it. So here we go, somebody needs to taste this to see if it works,” Martinez said. “So we decided to let Ellis Burks try to taste it and I say, ‘You know, this mamajuana, if you drink it, you might get turned on.’ He said, ‘Oh, I’ll try it. I’ll try it. I’m not playing anyway.’ So he took it, it seemed like it worked. So everybody was coming up to him for a little shot.”


(“It seemed like it worked” is doing some heavy lifting in this anecdote.)

The cocktail actually sounds pretty delicious, minus the boner pills. Oh, hello there, Ellis: