The $160 million child still lives in a $700-a-month apartment. Still drives a 1996 Impala. Still flies coach. Even now, Manny Ramirez shops for the lowest price when buying car rims, airplane tickets, even flowers for his mother, because he remembers what it was like to grow up sharing a single bed with three siblings. Baseball has forever extracted the $160 million child from the poverty, but it can't ever extract the poverty from the $160 million child, and that's why the enormous, sparkling rock now embedded in Ramirez's left earlobe is such a spectacularly cheap fake.

"Bought it in a mall," Ramirez says, without a trace of shame. "Forty dollars."

Baseball may be about to shatter like Mike Piazza's bat, sawed off by outrageous contracts offered to players who can help them by owners who can't help themselves. And Ramirez's contract is a prime example. Cleveland initially offered him $75 million, then inflated its offer in less than one year to $160 million, and it still wasn't enough to keep his bat from going to Boston for the kind of dollars Ramirez didn't really need, can't ever spend and certainly doesn't understand. Days before signing one of the most colossal contracts in sports history, Ramirez went shopping for a home, perused a $2 million model and asked his agent in all seriousness, "Can I afford this?" His agent replied, in all seriousness, that Ramirez could afford the whole damn neighborhood.

In many ways, from his careless innocence to his shy humility, Ramirez remains that poor child who grew up in the Dominican Republic. The child who was breast-fed until he was almost 4 because milk in his neighborhood was either harmful or nonexistent. The child whose fatigued father thought about jumping to his death while delirious from fixing roofs in summer heat. The child whose mother, after moving to New York's Washington Heights, worked for $200 a week in a sewing factory.

Ramirez, 28, describes himself as "a child, not an adult," and weaves absentmindedly along life's roads the same way he used to drive around the streets near Jacobs Field, where he was once cited for driving without a license, without proper plates, with illegally tinted windows and with the stereo turned up too loud ... whereupon the police officer discovered Ramirez had two Florida driver's licenses and two Social Security numbers. Then, after releasing him, the cop stopped and ticketed him again for immediately making an illegal U-turn.

So $160 million later, Ramirez doesn't need change. He has no maid, no valet, no gardener, no driver and no money-soaked ego, either. Asked to go shopping in South Florida's ritzy Bal Harbour, Ramirez laughs and declines, saying, "I'm not first-class. I'm not Alex Rodriguez." Asked the best compliment he has ever received, Ramirez bypasses all of baseball's accolades and says he is forever flattered when someone is surprised by his humility. Ramirez vows never to buy even a million-dollar home, because he doesn't want to throw his wealth in anybody's face, and, besides, why live on an exclusive island with Gloria Estefan and Julio Iglesias if guards will just make family visits more difficult?

You know how Ramirez celebrated his monster contract? By vacationing in the Bahamas ... because the hotel-sponsored trip was free. He didn't gamble so much as a cent. "I'm a simple man," Ramirez says in Spanish, "of simple tastes."

Ramirez is ... what are the words the writers have used? Enigmatic? Moody? Confused? Albert Belle? No. No. No. No. Those are all so very wrong. Can that much really be lost in the translation from Spanish to English? Insecure about his accent and afraid to sound stupid in English, Ramirez didn't do many interviews during his eight years in Cleveland. This didn't make him moody. What it made him was silent. And scared. And as anonymous as one of the game's top five hitters can ever be. Cleveland's Plain Dealer wrote that "reading Ramirez is like trying to read tea leaves," and Sports Illustrated wrote he is "tougher to read than Sanskrit." Well, yeah, he's tough to read, but only if you are not literate in the language he uses to tell his story. Otherwise, from the X-Men tattoo on his right arm to the Crayola hair dye to the way he responds "I love you more" when his mother says "I love you," Ramirez is no more difficult to read than a children's book.

"I'm the invisible man," Ramirez says in Spanish. "Not moody, just shy. If I go to a club, I hide in the corner. I don't need to be a VIP with Dom Perignon. I don't want people to treat me a certain way for who I am. I want people to treat me a certain way for how I am."

The word Ramirez chooses to describe himself is "simple," and it's as accurate as any. He's as happy watching one of his Spanish soap operas as he is in the batter's box. One of Ramirez's four sisters, Clara, describes him as "timid, quiet and closed" until he gets to know someone—just like the rest of the family. Sure, Ramirez can be as oblivious in the real world as he sometimes is on those basepaths, staggering from station to station looking so wide-eyed and dizzy that the Indians once tested him for attention deficit disorder. But he is every bit as genuine as his $40 earring is counterfeit, and his unadorned, uncomplicated view of the world makes you wonder if he's the one with life's road map in his hands while the rest of us are stumbling around lost.

Ramirez doesn't study pitchers. He doesn't even know most of their names. He doesn't listen to scouting reports or ask teammates what somebody is throwing or pay attention in the on-deck circle. He figures pitchers should worry about him, not the other way around. Is he concerned about Boston's history of losing? Ramirez says he knows nothing of Boston's history, period. Yaz? What's that? Ask him how many home runs he had three years ago (45) or how many RBI he had two years ago (165), and he says he has no idea, adding he doesn't play for numbers. Ramirez's approach to the game is one baseball people refer to as no-brain/no-headaches. Both his swing and his attitude are free of tension. Ramirez didn't pick up a bat this off-season, not even once.

"I don't like too many things in my head," he says. "I don't care who is pitching. All I need to see is the ball. My mind is always clean. Empty, empty, empty." About being tested for ADD, Ramirez says, "If I was distracted, how did I put up these numbers? Better to stay distracted if I'm going to put up these numbers."

None of this is to suggest Ramirez doesn't work hard. In high school, six days a week, he would run with a tire tied to his waist at 5 a.m. through Washington Heights, a neighborhood his coach described as murderous and crack-addled. This winter, at 6 a.m. every day, Ramirez ran on the beach for miles, then up and down six flights of stairs with a friend on his heels screaming, calling him names and imploring, "ˇVamos! ˇVamos!" Then he would begin his real workout.

Ramirez routinely shows up six hours early for games, even after spending the morning lifting weights. He reported to spring training early, with pitchers and catchers, and will live throughout the spring with the minor leaguers to reduce expenses and distractions. One of Ramirez's sisters handles his finances, everything from paying his bills to signing his checks, which allows him to remove the clutter from his life and compress his world so much that it becomes scarcely bigger than that baseball.

Asked if he is worried about guaranteeing so much money to a player who spends so little time thinking, Boston GM Dan Duquette says, "He's one of the 10 most productive hitters in history. His best years are ahead of him. Combine slugging and on-base percent age, and only names like Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Lou Gehrig are ahead of him. He's ahead of Mark McGwire and Mike Piazza. He's the most patient hitter in the league and the top RBI man in the business ..."

Yeah, Dan, but isn't it dangerous giving $160 mil lion to someone so childlike ...

"He's as smart as anyone in the game when he's in the batter's box," Duquette says. "You know what Manny knows? He knows what he can hit. He knows to lay off everything else. He knows himself."

Yeah, Dan, but ...

"Let me ask you something: You think Babe Ruth would have passed those mental tests?"

***

You want a voyeuristic peek into why baseball is dying a dollar at a time? If this sport shuts down again, you want to see why even McGwire and Sammy Sosa might not have the strength to lift it from underneath all this money? Take a look inside here—inside Suite 1621 of Miami's Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which features a panoramic view of a sun-soaked Biscayne Bay and costs $3,000 a night, taxes not included. It is early December, the first meeting between Ramirez and the Red Sox, and all of baseball's major power brokers are represented. Two sports agents. An accountant. Two ESPN television cameras. A four-person TV crew. Boston's general manager. His assistant. A superstar. And, of course, $107 million on the table. Figuratively speaking. Or, if you prefer, figures speaking.

That was Boston's initial offer to Ramirez. And it wasn't nearly enough. It was about $53 million light, even for a man who once left two week's worth of salary behind in a cowboy boot, once got a concerned call from Cleveland management after forgetting to cash five consecutive paychecks and once left $40,000 cash in his Impala's glove compartment. The reason Ramirez wears that cheap earring? He's afraid he'll misplace anything more expensive.

Ramirez's agent, Jeff Moorad, had allowed ESPN into Suite 1621 as part of an inside look at the negotiating process. Duquette was clearly uncomfortable with the cameras, but he also knew that in today's game, $107 million is only enough to buy you a seat in the room, not the right to pick the furniture. So here's the snapshot you have developing in your hands as baseball heads into the final season before the collective bargaining agreement expires: The leader of a proud franchise begging a player, for all to see, to please, please take his mountain of millions ... and being told by the player's handlers that the mountain isn't nearly large enough yet ... even though the player himself doesn't need any kind of mountain at all.

Ramirez says today that he knew late last summer he wouldn't return to Cleveland: "There wasn't enough money in the world." He remains hurt and angry that, while he missed 44 games with a misbehaving hamstring last season, landing on the disabled list for the first time in his eight-year career, management questioned how hurt he really was. Indians owner Larry Dolan said, "It doesn't look like he wants to help us." GM John Hart added, "Manny is killing us." A career .313 hitter, Ramirez returned to hit .371 with 25 homers and 75 RBI in his final 71 games, dragging Cleveland back into the race practically by himself, but not before telling teammate Enrique Wilson, his only close friend on the team, that he was playing his final season for the Indians. To punctuate his point, Ramirez homered in his last at-bat at Jacobs Field.

"What they said hurt a lot," Ramirez says now in Spanish. "Those people behaved badly. I'm in my last year, and I don't want to play? That doesn't even fit in the mind of a crazy man. They didn't even ask me if I could play. They asked Sandy [Alomar], not me. They're like that. They tell you one thing and do another. They always lie to the players. They wanted to make me look bad with fans so they could look good. They don't know what they're doing. The owner doesn't know anything about baseball. I was a calf raised on that farm, and I appreciate the opportunity they gave me, but they should be ashamed. They weren't thinking of me. They were thinking of themselves. I was tired of just winning division titles. I want to win—really win."

Hart did not return calls requesting comment, but Ramirez's agents maintain they negotiated in good faith and that their conflicted client had not made up his mind about leaving Cleveland until minutes before signing with Boston. They say Ramirez would have remained an Indian if Boston hadn't come up with the extra $53 million and, as proof, they point out that he wept upon making his decision official.

"Manny could easily live off $50,000 a year, but he wanted to be respected," says Eugene Mato, Moorad's associate. "It was very important for him to be baseball's second-highest-paid player."

Mato knows Ramirez better than most. They met two years ago, after Moorad client Roberto Alomar told Moorad that Ramirez was unhappy with his agent. Moorad couldn't connect with Ramirez speaking English, so he brought Mato, of Cuban descent, along. A trust developed. Mato proved to be someone who could get Ramirez things cheap—stereos, insurance, tickets. Ramirez wanted things at cost. Mato always got them, by saying they were for Ramirez.

"He called me for everything," Mato says. "Then his parents and sisters started calling."

Ramirez learned to value money early, while living on the sixth floor of an apartment complex with no elevators. The dollar, after all, cost him his parents for two years. They left the kids with grandparents and came to the U.S. in 1983 because Dad wanted to start anew after seeing too many colleagues die from work-related toxins. Manny and his sisters arrived in 1985 and worked in department stores to contribute to the rent, but they still slept four to a bed. At 13, Ramirez made deliveries to buy his first baseball uniform.

The family remains so close today that Ramirez has bought his parents and sisters homes and cars in the U.S. Six family members, including his parents, lived with him throughout his time in Cleveland. Ramirez's parents and grandparents don't speak English, and Manny never really learned either, because he lived among Hispanics in high school, and his every class had a translator. If he could change one thing about his childhood, he says, he would have learned better English. He describes himself as "very timid" with reporters because "I don't know how to express myself enough," but he says he will try to speak more in Boston because it looks "ugly" not to try. And, besides, Sosa has gotten pretty far with just a little English and a lot of smile.

"If I don't talk, nobody will know me," Ramirez says in Spanish. "I put up MVP numbers a few years ago, but they didn't give it to me because I didn't talk. We're not in a time where the numbers talk enough. You have to talk too. I'm getting better, though. I surprised even myself the first day in Boston. I was relaxed talking to 30 reporters!"

Says Manny's sister Clara: "People misinterpret his shyness for being surly, moody, self-absorbed. He has to let people know him. He has to share. It's not enough to hit the ball far. People want their applause returned. He's trying."

The Red Sox, celebrating their 100th anniversary this year, are banking big on Ramirez's bat, which remains fluent in any language. A beer-bellied ghost hovers over this haunted franchise, and now $160 million has been spent on a quiet, childlike exorcist.

Babe Ruth better beware.

Because Baby Ruth doesn't know enough to fear.

This article appears in the March 5, 2001, issue of ESPN The Magazine.