Best Current Professional Baseball Hitter

Manny Ramirez is the best current professional baseball hitter who is known for dreadlocks, the baggy pants, carefree attitude, fielding adventures, leaving behind ten-thousand dollars in car's glove-compartment, and vanishing behind a wall during pitching changes and giving a high-five to a fan in the midst of executing a double-play.

Ramirez, formerly the Boston Red Sox left fielder who, on May 31, 2008 entered the exclusive 500-home-run club with a shot off the Orioles reliever, Chad Bradford in the 7th innings. He is among the best all-around hitters ever to play baseball.

He, together with Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez is certainly on the short list as the best right-handed batters of this current generation!

Orioles hitting Coach Terry Crowley said that he had an amazing swing, capable of hitting the fastest of pitches, and with such force that it seems that he will break the ball in pieces! Also, one American League scout said about the trio of Pujols, Ramirez, and Rodriguez, that although the other two are remarkable players, Ramirez is incomparable. For most people, Ramirez is the most exciting of all players, the only one they pay to watch. There's just something about the way Ramirez can wait on a pitch until the last possible second and then rip it to all fields.

There are 23 other men in baseball history to have hit at least 500 home runs. Of those, only Jimmie Foxx, Babe Ruth, and Ted Williams have greater lifetime batting average than Manny Ramirez’ .312 career average. His 1,655 RBI through June 28, 2009 was 25th all time and moving up.

Ramirez also has a shortcoming, in that he accumulated his super power numbers in the midst of the Steroid period where many players were marred with accusations, and often, implications. Ramiriz has been marred by the scandal. In fact, in 2009, Manny was suspended for 50 games for violating the MLB's Performance Enhancing Drug Policy.

All of this makes it hard for Ramirez to be compared with old legends, but what helps to set Ramirez apart in this period is his reliability. Between 1995 to 2006, he did not hit more than forty five homers in any one season and never less than twenty-six. In that time, he stuck hundred or more runs eleven times. On 5 different occasions, he had 125 or more RBI.

Year after year, Manny Ramirez simply produces, and that's what makes him the top hitter today in major league baseball.

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