01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, May 17, 2005

It's easy to take Manny Ramirez for granted.

Maybe that's because he's always seemed to live in his own world, some private Idaho where it is just him and the pitcher and the ball, baseball reduced to its most elemental level.

Maybe that's because he's always had a propensity to do a couple of outrageous things over the course of a season, things that simply make you shake your head and wonder why.

And maybe that's because he's never been one of those five-tool players everyone likes to rave about. He doesn't run well. He doesn't throw particulary well. He too often looks like an accident waiting to happen in left field, someone better suited to be playing in a Sunday morning beer league than in a major-league outfield.

What he does extremely well is hit.

Year after year.

In good times and bad.

Regardless of everything that seems to be swirling around him.

What he is is a hitting savant, someone very wise in the way of putting a bat on a ball.

In a sense, Manny belongs to another time, a simpler era when ballplayers were seen and not heard, a time when we really knew nothing about their lives off the field, where they seemed to only exist between the white lines. In this age of self promotion, and look-at-me, Ramirez almost goes out of his way to avoid the spotlight, to the point it sometimes seems as if he gets lost in the shuffle.

Certainly, that's understandable on a team with several high-profile personalities.

It's tough to get noticed when one of your teammates has a best-selling book out and now is seen as baseball's newest pinup.

But it's not just Johnny Damon. It's Curt Schilling, who long ago turned self-promotion into an art form. It's Jason Varitek, the acknowledged leader, the captain. It's Tim Wakefield, now getting recognition for his years of service. It's David Ortiz, whose personality can light up the clubhouse. Maybe most of all, it's Pedro and Nomar, two guys who aren't even here anymore, but whose legends still hover over the team like supernovas screaming across the nighttime sky.

Manny?

The guy who is easy to take for granted.

But we are witnessing history here, only the 39th player to hit 400 home runs, just the 13th player to reach that milestone before his 33rd birthday. We are witnessing one of the great hitters of his era, someone who now is close to the rarified air of the all-time greats.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that.

Maybe that's because Dan Duquette gave him a ridiculous contract five years ago, one the Sox tried to get out of two winters ago when they put him on waivers, the ultimate indignity. Maybe that's because he's sometimes seen as the personification of the spoiled contemporary athlete, forever off in Manny World, someplace that only he has the key to.

One thing is sure: Manny needs a better media adviser.

Maybe it's that simple.

So much of who gets the attention these days is based on the media dance. Who knows how to do it, and who doesn't. Who creates a buzz around themselves and who does not. America in the new millennium, where how you sell yourself too often is more important than what you actually do.

Manny is an example of that, too.

Give him a different persona and we might be erecting a statue for him outside Fenway. Or at least having a sense of who he is when he's not hitting balls over the Green Monster.

Instead, he is still Manny, ever after all the hits and all the home runs, and I've come to understand that that's not a bad thing. Have come to appreciate Manny for what he is, and not get overly concerned about what he is not.

For we know that there are going to be a couple of inexplicable brain cramps every season, a couple of times when his obliviousness simply makes you shake your head. Yet we also know there's nothing mean-spirited about him, nor is there anything divisive. Manny being Manny is never a problem inside the Sox' clubhouse, and if that's the case why should anyone else care?

And we also know that Manny is going to hit, regardless of his slow start this spring, for the simple reason that Manny always hits.

His 400th home run Sunday in Seattle is the latest testimony to this, reaffirmation of the face that Ramirez has been hitting for a long time now.

So consider this an appreciation.

Or whatever you're doing, Manny, keep doing it.

We'll let history be the scorecard.