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From 2/24/2008 Boston Herald.
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"Delcarmen fits right in" By Steve Buckley Sunday, February 24, 2008

FORT MYERS - “I was busy the first month or two after the World Series,” Manny Delcarmen was saying the other morning at his locker at the Red Sox [team stats]’ minor league spring training complex. “Wherever the trophy was, I pretty much lived there. But I didn’t mind it. We did some cool stuff.”

Cool stuff, as in traveling with the trophy to New Hampshire, where he received hockey’s version of a key to the city: Dropping the ceremonial puck at an AHL Manchester Monarchs game. He toed the parquet at a Celtics [team stats] game. He made it to schools, to hospitals, to banquets.

But these are activities that can also be tough on the waistline of a man, young or old. Minor league hockey games and Celtics games mean arena food. Hot dog, anyone? Pretzel?

And the banquets? Not for nothing do they call it the rubber-chicken circuit.

But a funny thing happened to Delcarmen on the way to the buffet line: He never got there. When he showed up last week at the back end of Edison Avenue, which is where the Red Sox do their grunting and groaning before they move downtown to City of Palms Park to begin their Grapefruit League schedule, Delcarmen looked more like a slick, trim high school pitcher than a veteran big leaguer.

No. Wait. Delcarmen was one of hell of a pitcher during his days at West Roxbury High School, but he was never slick, never trim. Heck, on the very day the Red Sox selected him in the second round of the 2000 amateur draft, Delcarmen wasn’t even at home to receive the congratulatory telephone call from then-general manager Dan Duquette. He was chowing down at the Old Country Buffet. True story.

But Delcarmen no longer is a kid. He is 26 years old now, with parts of three major league seasons on his resume. He is married, and he and Anna have a son, Manny III.

So when his brother-in-law sidled up to him this offseason and said, “Hey, Manny, I need to get you into shape,” Manny listened.

The brother-in-law, Rolando Amori, is a bodybuilder and personal trainer. When he first started working with his brother-in-law, Delcarmen weighed 223 pounds.

When Delcarmen arrived in Fort Myers for spring training, he says he weighed 205.

The 2008 Red Sox media guide lists Delcarmen at 190 pounds, a figure no doubt arrived at by the same numbers-crunchers who used to list quarterback Doug Flutie as 5-foot-10. But you know how it is in professional sports: If you’re short, the publicists can magically make you tall. If you’re heavy, they can make you slim.

This time around, Delcarmen really is slim . . . even if he’d have to lose an arm to top the scales at 190 pounds.

But with all respect to Amori, it wasn’t just stomach crunches that helped plant a slimmed-down Delcarmen in Fort Myers.

It was, too, a pledge by Delcarmen to stop crushing.

That’s crushing, as in pigging out.

“I could crush anything,” he said. “Whatever you can name, I could crush it. Me, I like pizza rolls. I could take 20 pizza rolls and just crush ’em.”

What else?

“You know those little burgers from White Castle?” he said. “Those are good. I’m really big on those Ellio’s pan pizzas. I could crush about four of those.

“You name it. One in the morning, two in the morning. Man, I could crush.”

And now?

“Now, I try not to eat late at night,” he said. “For me, it was more protein and less carbs. Shakes in the morning, a lot of turkey and chicken, and a lot of greens, which I never really liked. For two months straight I did that, and I lost the weight.”

So here’s the question: Having lost the weight, does it worry Delcarmen that he may have lost a little zip on his fastball?

“I feel a lot stronger,” he said. “My legs definitely feel stronger. I’m not worried about it. But you never know.”

That’s a surprisingly candid get-out-of-town comment, that you-never-know bit. But Delcarmen would be wise to continue his course of action, for no other reason than because for every wide-bodied David Wells and Curt Schilling [stats] and Rick Reuschel who manages to pitch to the age of 40 and beyond, the road is littered with guys who ate their ways out of the big leagues.

For now, Ellio’s will just have to wait.