Thursday, May 3, 2001
Updated: May 4, 1:08 PM ET
Genius at work
By by Tim Kurkjian
ESPN The Magazine
The best hitter in baseball appears oblivious to all that's going on around him. In the field, on the bases, even at the plate, he moves deliberately and seemingly without care. Is he paying attention? He once went to the bat rack, grabbed a bat that wasn't his, went to the plate and hit a home run. The next at-bat, same thing, picked a bat and doubled. The next at-bat, same thing. A third, different bat, none of which was his, and he hit another rocket.
This is Manny Ramirez. Three times in September of 1995, he had to be told by the home-plate umpire, "Manny, that's ball four, you can go to first now." This is the best hitter in baseball? He doesn't always know, or always mind, which bats he uses. He loses track of the count. How can this be? Maybe this is how geniuses work. Maybe they seem flighty and clueless and ambivalent, but really, they're actually in this sphere of concentration that normal people -- or in this case, normal hitters -- never will be able to comprehend.
"I love watching him hit," says Twins coach Paul Molitor, who was fun to watch hit as he rattled out 3,319 career hits. "He has the ability to foul off pitches he can't handle until he can get a pitch that he can handle. And when he gets one of those, he never misses it."
From 1998 to 2000, Ramirez drove in 432 runs in 415 games. In 1999-2000, he became the first player since Ted Williams to average an RBI per game in consecutive seasons. This season, playing half his games in Williams' house, Fenway Park, Ramirez was second in the American League in hitting (.396), first in RBI (33 in 27 games) through Wednesday. In his first at-bat at Fenway this year, he hit a three-run homer. It was dramatic, but nothing like his final at-bat at Jacobs Field on October 1, 2000. The fans knew it might be Ramirez's last act with Cleveland. The crowd stood and screamed for him to hit a homer, which almost never happens. Looking lifeless as ever as he walked to the plate, Ramirez acknowledged the fans, then hit a slider off John Frascatore over the fence in left-center.
"Great players," says Molitor, "rise to the occasion."
Ramirez is a great player with an odd manner, one that suggests that he isn't having fun. Yet he is. But even the way he dresses suggest that he forgot there was a game today, and he had to hurry to get ready. His uniform pants are baggy, stuffed into his spikes, with no sign of stirrups. This is how he walks through life, as patiently as possible. Teammate Pedro Martinez was asked in spring training how Ramirez would do playing in Boston, with its inherent pressures, and Pedro basically said, "It won't bother him, he won't even know where he is." Indeed. Ramirez supposedly has a hard time explaining where he lives in Boston.
The slow gait, the emotionless approach to life and to hitting is, in many ways, good. The key to hitting is to keep the head still, to have quiet hands, then silently explode into the hitting zone. Remember how fast Molitor's hands were? How did he get from Point A to Point B so quickly? Mike Piazza is the same. His body (especially his hands) is so relaxed, then -- pow! -- he's through the ball with remarkable strength.
That is Ramirez. He has tremendous balance, he rarely gets fooled, he's rarely caught on his front foot, which is amazing considering he's so upright in the batter's box, and has such a high leg kick. He has such astounding power to right-center field, yet try to beat him on the inside part of the part of the plate, and he clears his hips and hits one 450 feet to left field.
"He picks the ball up better than anyone I've ever seen," says Rockies manager Buddy Bell, a former coach with the Indians. "If the count gets to 0-2, it doesn't matter with him."
There's no way to pitch him. Last season, he batted .463 when he put the first pitch in play. Fine, don't throw him a first-pitch strike, a pitcher must think. But when Ramirez got ahead in the count, he hit .569. Jim Riggleman, a former Cubs manager who was a coach with the Indians last year, was asked about his first year in the American League. "I knew Manny was a good hitter," Riggleman said, "but I didn't know he was this great."
And now, thanks to $20 million a year, he is Boston's next great hitter, an RBI waiting to happen. So, if you're at a game at Fenway, and Manny has to be told by the home-plate umpire that it's ball four, don't worry. If Manny reaches in the bat rack and pulls out Chris Stynes' bat instead of his, don't worry. He is a genius at work.
Tim Kurkjian is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and a regular contributor to Baseball Tonight. E-mail tim.kurkjian@espnmag.com.
