The genius of Manny Ramirez

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-- Former New York Times Book editor Rebecca Pepper Sinkler



"You don't know what to throw the guy," says Bill Swift, a one-time Olympic hero and 20-game winner who faced MannyBManny eight times in his career. Ramirez crushed six hits, three of them doubles, two of them homers. "You just look at him in the box, and you know that no matter what you throw -- fastball in, curveball away, slider down, change-up -- it doesn't matter. He will hit it."



"There must be a pitch that can get him out," Swift says. "I never found it."







The great and powerful hitters came fast and furious, and it was easy to miss the fact that one of those young hitters was Mozart. MannyBManny's first game was in Minnesota on Sept. 2, 1993. He went 0-for-4 against Twins' pitchers Kevin Tapani and Carl Willis, though he did hit three balls hard. The next night he was in his town, in New York, at Yankee Stadium, facing the Yankees, and he crushed two home runs. That accomplished, he promptly went zero for his next 15.

From a distance, there seemed something quirky about this guy ... he smiled on the field but did not appear to be having a lot of fun. He appeared pleasant enough, but plainly he did not have much interest in talking. He was a good hitter almost from the start -- when he was 23 years old he had a .400 on-base percentage and hit 31 homers. The last three 23-year-olds to do that were Frank Thomas, Ken Griffey and Reggie Jackson.

The thing was the Indians already had Albert Belle, so the position of "Intimidating And Moody Right-handed Hitter Who Crushes Pitches To Every Field And Does Not Talk Much To The Press And Grounds Into Too Many Double Plays And Often Seems Disinterested In The Outfield," was already filled.



"What Boston didn't know," one baseball executive says, "is that in every possible way but one Manny Ramirez is like a child. The only place he's an adult is in the batter's box. In there, he's like the smartest man in the world."


-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton


"I've seen it too many times to doubt it," Bill says.


"When it comes to hitting, the guy's mind works on a whole other level," Allard says.

These are a couple of guys who have seen Manny Ramirez play a lot. Then, with MannyBManny -- unlike almost anyone else -- it seems like the more you see him as a hitter, the more in awe you become. The more you know, the more of a folk hero the guy becomes.

That's genius. At the moment, there are four right-handed hitters in baseball history who hit 500 homers and 500 doubles. It's only for a moment because Frank Thomas figures to limp his way to five more doubles, and in time Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols should put up numbers that will scramble the mind.

For now, though, it is four. There's Mays, of course. There's Hank Aaron, of course. There's Frank Robinson, who often seems forgotten in these conversations. What do you have with those three? With Mays, you have all-around brilliance, with Aaron a staggering consistency, with Robinson an unquenchable ferociousness. There's a sturdiness about those three.

What does Manny Ramirez -- the fourth in the group -- have in common with them? The answer seems to be: Nothing. This is a guy who jogs after balls in the gap, who has brought his iPod to the outfield, who so frustrated the Boston Red Sox they put him on waivers. But he was faster to 500 homers and faster to 500 doubles than any of them.

Yeah, he's a goofball. But it's different for him with a bat in his hands. During last year's playoff series with Cleveland he famously said in reference to reaching the World Series, "If it doesn't happen, who cares? There's always next year. It's not like it's the end of the world." Manny being Manny. Then, he reached base six of his next 12 times at bat and the Red Sox won three straight.

On July 27, 2003, against the Yankees, Ramirez ran to the outfield with a giant water bottle jammed in his back pocket. The incident would be mentioned again and again as a way to describe the kookiness of Manny ... that very same game, though, he hit a home run off of Mike Mussina.

In Game 1 of the 2004 World Series, Manny made two of the funniest errors in the history of postseason baseball. He also went 3-for-5 with two RBIs. And he ended up winning the World Series MVP award.

"You can't judge Manny like you judge anybody else," says one former big league manager. "Again and again, he will make you wonder if it's worth it. But then you will watch him hit, and you will remember: 'Yeah, it is.'"



-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Sure, that's easy to say, F., but maybe what keeps Manny being Manny, is that nobody knows what's on his mind. Kansas City pitcher Brian Bannister has had some moderate success with Manny. He has faced him six times and struck him out twice. And one of the two hits he gave up was an infield single, a Manny rarity.

Still, Bannister admits to being entirely spooked by Ramirez. Bannister is probably baseball's most cerebral pitcher -- often, baseball men say, to his detriment -- and as such it drives him nuts that he cannot figure out what Manny might be thinking.

"He has such an ambiguous personality," Bannister says. "He doesn't give anything away. You have no idea what he's feeling at the plate. He could be in the middle of a slump or the best hitting streak of his life, and he has that same blank expression on his face.

"It's freaky. Sometime he will just let a good pitch go by, like he doesn't care. If you're lucky enough to strike him out, he will just kind of walk back to the dugout like it didn't even matter. And you're on the mound thinking, 'What's going on here? Is he setting me up? What's going on in that head of his?'"



Manny didn't miss. Manny doesn't miss. Bill James would later call it the hardest ball he has ever seen hit in his many years of baseball watching. Manny's home run was crushed to center field, one of those natural wonders so awesome that afterward you didn't want a distance estimate as much as you wanted to know how fast it was going. Bannister watched it go and realized, almost immediately, that Manny had beaten him, somehow, some way. Genius.

"I think, in the end, you can't help but admire it," Bannister said. "It doesn't happen every day. You realize that that are only a handful of people in the entire world who can hit a baseball that far, that hard. Maybe not even a handful."