Ramirez Remains Main Man For Red-Hot Indians

Right now, Manny Ramirez is alone in the crowd.

As TV camera crews and reporters are scurrying around the clubhouse interviewing the night’s star players following another Indians’ win, Cleveland’s biggest star is ignored as he gets dressed.

Ramirez went 4-for-4, drove in a couple more runs and hit another homer. But no one approaches the right fielder, who hasn’t spoken to the local media since March. No one bothers to ask him if he hit a fastball or if he thinks he can challenge Hack Wilson’s RBI record.

Ramirez has nothing against the media--he just doesn’t see the need to talk.

“He just likes to play baseball, that’s all,” says infielder Enrique Wilson, one of Ramirez’s closest friends on the team. “That’s just Manny’s way.”

After throwing on some baggy jeans, boots, a T-shirt and baseball cap, Ramirez offers a polite smile and nods as he leaves Jacobs Field at the end of another long workday. Always smiling.

“That’s Manny,” says teammate Dwight Gooden. “He could go 0-for-4 or 4-for-4 and he’s the same. Every day to him is like a Sunday walk in the park.”

That’s Manny. It’s a refrain that constantly pops up when Ramirez’s teammates, coaches and manager talk about him.

Quiet. That’s Manny.

Confident. That’s Manny.

Consistent. That’s Manny.

Kooky. That’s Manny.

The best right fielder in baseball. That’s Manny, too.

Ramirez may not have much to say, but his statistics are screaming for attention.

Coming off a monster 45-homer, 145-RBI season in 1998, he’s having an even bigger ’99. Entering a weekend’s series against Boston, Ramirez was batting .348 with 13 homers and a major league leading 59 RBIs. He’s ranked among the top seven in RBIs, average, runs, hits and homers.

Ramirez has driven in a mind-boggling 165 runs in his last 139 games, a pace that would give him 117 at the All-Star break. And with the Indians averaging 7.1 runs per game, Ramirez could make a serious run at Wilson’s mark of 190 in a season.

Yet when fans rank the AL’s top outfielders, you’re bound to hear the names Griffey, Gonzalez and even Belle mentioned ahead of Ramirez’s.

That may soon change.

“What Manny has accomplished this year and last year says a lot about his maturation,” says Indians manager Mike Hargrove. “If he stays on this road, people have to look at him as a major force in baseball. He’s not there yet, but he’s on a road very few of us get to travel.”

Ramirez’s road to superstardom has been a bumpy one filled with plenty of hard lefts, veers to the right and even a couple of U-turns. There might not be a major leaguer who is as easygoing and harder to figure out.

Before he became an All-Star player, Ramirez was best known for being an all-star flake. Some of his off-field antics have become legendary.

Like the time on a road trip that he asked an Indians beat writer if he could borrow $60,000--on the spot--so he and pitcher Julian Tavares could buy motorcycles. Or when Ramirez walked in during the middle of O.J Simpson’s chase through the streets of Los Angeles and asked with concern, “What did Chad do?” Ramirez thought the police were after then-teammate Chad Ogea, whose name is pronounced O.J.

Then last year, after he hit his 13th career postseason home run to pull within two of Babe Ruth, Ramirez was asked: “What do you think Ruth would say?”

Ramirez replied: “I don’t know, you’ve got to go ask him.”

It was vintage Ramirez--baffling if taken at face value, brilliant if examined a little deeper. That’s Manny.

Ramirez, who turns 27 today, has matured as a person and a player in the past year.

“Ever since about the All-Star break last year, I began to see he had changed a little bit,” said Gooden. “He just seemed to be more focused and now he really has a confidence about him.”

Indians batting coach Charlie Manuel started to see a difference in Ramirez at about the same time. Instead of swinging at balls off the plate he couldn’t reach, Ramirez was sitting and waiting for his pitch. And his habit of lunging at balls out in front seemed to disappear.

“He was focusing better,” Manuel said. “And he was getting his arms out quicker and extending them to drive balls with more power. He could always hit. But he’s learned to become a more disciplined hitter. No one has worked harder at it than Manny.”

Ramirez’s numbers increased dramatically in ‘98, jumping by 19 homers and 57 RBIs in the same number of games--150--as the previous year. His defense also improved, although he still tries the occasional one-handed, no-look catch.

Ramirez credits team psychologist Charles Maher with his improved game. After he was given the team’s 1998 player of the year award earlier this season, Ramirez presented it to Maher.

That’s Manny. Always paying someone else a compliment.

“I’ve been lucky enough to play with Manny for a long time,” says Jim Thome, his teammate since AAA in 1993. “And you see what a great player he is. Well, he’s even a better person.”

Before a game Ramirez, who has two years left on his contract, bounces around the Indians’ clubhouse like a kangaroo. After wolfing down some sushi, he joins Roberto Alomar for a heated game of Ping-Pong, sliding in his stocking feet on the carpet to return volleys as if he were on the clay at Roland Garros.

After that, he pops a merengue CD in the clubhouse system to the approval of Latin teammates Wil Cordero and Jolbert Cabrera. Ramirez is having fun. Maybe he wants to talk.

“No, thanks,” he says with a smile when asked to be interviewed for this story.

Ramirez’s carefree attitude has rubbed off on all the Indians. They are a loose bunch off the field, all business on it.

“Manny plays the game so relaxed,” says Thome. “You don’t see him get frustrated or mad.”

Only in recent days did his teammates see a new side of Ramirez. After Detroit’s Jeff Weaver hit him in the batting helmet with a retaliatory pitch, Ramirez went after Weaver. Ramirez was ejected for the first time in his career and received a three-game suspension.

“It takes a lot to tick Manny off,” catcher Sandy Alomar says. “But when you get hit in the head, that’s a little different.”

A few days later, Ramirez is playing pregame catch with Cordero. Roberto Alomar is standing next to Cordero imitating Ramirez’s fielding style.

With Wilson tossing him popups, Alomar does a Ramiresque duckwalk under the ball and drops it, just like Ramirez had done the night before on a sinking liner. Ramirez laughs.

“That’s us just having some fun with Manny,” Wilson says later. “He knows we’re kidding.”

Then, as if prompted by a stage director, Ramirez is running across the room pushing an empty laundry cart and shouting to Wilson in Spanish, “How do you like my new glove?”

Right now, Ramirez is the center of attention.