Manny hated being the center of attention. He just wanted to be one of the guys. That was one of the things people loved about him. He’d hit, say, two home runs and a triple for the Trojans. Then he’d go back to his block, and the men on the corner would ask how he had done.

Manny would just shrug and say, “I went 0 for 3.”

But you cannot have a swing like that, a swing that is going to take you to the majors and bring you a $160 million contract with the Red Sox, a $7 million penthouse at the Ritz-Carlton condominiums in downtown Boston and two World Series championships, and keep being one of the guys.

I don’t think I ever got to sit down to talk with him for more than a few minutes at a time. It did not help that I did not know a word of Spanish, while Manny, who had arrived in Washington Heights at 13, spoke little English. He did invite me to his family’s sixth-floor walk-up tenement apartment to meet his father, who drove a livery cab, and his mother, who stitched blouses in a factory, and two of his three older sisters.

It eventually dawned on me that I did not need to talk to Manny. The way to know him was to watch him hit — and run up a hill with a tire.

Working on His Speed

At the start of his senior season some of the scouts had put out the word that they thought he needed more speed on the bases. So he started running up the steep hill beside the high school in the early morning with an automobile tire roped around his waist. The cafeteria ladies on their way to George Washington, the factory workers heading to the subway for the morning shift downtown, everyone cheered him on. It was as if he were pulling all of them up the hill with him.