EVERYWHERE you walked among the sidewalk sales in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan yesterday, you saw people wearing caps with the interlocking "NY," as you might expect with Yankee Stadium over there across the Harlem River in the Bronx. But you also saw many more Red Sox caps than you might expect.

"When they come in here," Ernesto Sanabria, a security guard at the Modell's sporting goods store on the corner of West 181st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, said with a smile, "I tell them to cover up the 'B."'

Not that they do. All those navy blue Red Sox caps with a red "B" being worn on the streets of this mostly Spanish-speaking section of New York City represent the devotion of those with a Dominican heritage to the Red Sox players born in the Dominican Republic, especially to Manny Ramirez, the 32-year-old slugger. He spent his teenage years here after arriving from Santo Domingo with his mother when he was 13.

Ramirez, who led the American League with 43 home runs this season, does not come around his old neighborhood as often as he once did; he lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in the off-season. But he remains a neighborhood legend.