"It's no secret that we weren't very good back then. That's one of the reasons, probably, that I got traded," Ramirez said Sunday. "The culture is totally different now.
"They're winning now. They made the playoffs back-to-back [years]. That automatically changed everything."
Ramirez and Kenny Lofton were shipped out to the Cubs on July 22, 2003, in exchange for Matt Bruback, Jose Hernandez and Bobby Hill. It was a salary dump for a franchise that was halfway through a stretch of 20 consecutive losing seasons.