They broke the mold on Manny Ramirez

Boston slugger Manny Ramirez hit his 500th home run on Saturday in Baltimore. I remember No. 1 quite well.

I was in my first job as a reporter/copy editor in suburban Cleveland, watching the game on TV, and Ramirez already was a guy we'd heard about for years. And Manny was already Manny, of course - he barely spoke English and was almost a savant when it came to hitting, but one of the worst outfielders ever seen.

He started in 1993 at Double-A and was called up to the also-ran Indians that September and played in the field in just one game. But in his second big-league game on Sept. 3, in Yankee Stadium, just down the street from where he grew up in Washington Heights, the 21-year-old designated hitter Ramirez launched his first two big-league homers into the left-field bleachers as a large group from his old neighborhood went bananas in the left-field bleachers. One of their own had made it, and was going to make it big. And he was going to take the Indians up with him.

Those were the only two homers Ramirez hit in 53 at-bats that September, but he cracked the Indians' lineup the next spring and the rest is history. And while Ramirez has definitely earned his flaky reputation - he was known to leave large, uncashed paychecks in his locker in visiting clubhouses - he's no dummy.

As Dan Connolly of the Baltimore Sun wrote:

There are 23 other men in baseball history to have hit at least 500 homers. Of those, only Jimmie Foxx and Ted Williams - both former Red Sox, coincidentally - have higher lifetime batting averages than Ramirez's .312 mark.

"He is up - on the road - at 10 in the morning, going to the weight room and working out," teammate Curt Schilling told the Sun. "He'll come over to the ballpark and hit early, work early. Go have lunch and come back. He does things that no one else does."

And he's grown up a lot. A fan who caught the ball gave it to Manny following the game - class move No. 1 - and Ramirez said he would auction it to benefit the Local Children's Charity in Boston.

"What I want to do with the ball is take some pictures with my kid," Ramirez told the Hartford Courant. "I don't want to keep the ball. I want to see how much money someone can put into the hospital that I'm donating $1,000 for each home run."

Photos: Manny Ramirez as a rookie in 1994 with the Cleveland Indians, and waving to the crowd after hitting his 500th home run in the seventh inning against the Baltimore Orioles on May 31, 2008 at Camden Yards in Baltimore. (Photos by Getty Images, and Greg Fiume/Getty Images)