NEW YORK — It is New York's first sunny Sunday afternoon of the summer and a small crowd has gathered around the tiny field at Highbridge Park in Washington Heights.
But the children of the Victor Lebron Little League play a game that only vaguely resembles baseball.
The elfin left fielder squats, head down, just a few feet behind second base. As the catcher throws back to the mound, the ball glances off the hitter's bat, prompting a debate over whether it was a foul ball. And in one dugout half a dozen boys, blissfully uninterested in their ballgame, spin in circles or, backs to the field, engage passersby in conversation.
Twenty years ago Manny Ramirez played in this park, a fact all the boys recite with pride. They are less proud of the fact that Ramirez, back in New York with the Dodgers to open a three-game series with the Mets tonight, is coming off a 50-game suspension for violating Major League Baseball's drug policy.
"I see him differently now," 11-year-old William Cepeda says. "I like him less because of the bad things he's doing now."
In the other dugout, 11-year-old Marcos Rodriguez agrees.
"Because he did steroids, I don't like him that much," he says with a sad shake of his head. "I still like him. But not as much as I liked him before."
This is Ramirez's home turf. He grew up across the street in a six-story walkup on West 168th Street. About a mile away is George Washington High, where he became a local hero despite the fact he didn't graduate (he later got a GED).
For the kids following in his footsteps, however, there's a limit to how much they want to emulate him.
"He doesn't want to be growing up idolizing someone that is doing something bad," says Carlos Delgado, pointing to the field where his 12-year-old son, Brian, is playing. "It's not good at all. My son, he watches TV and he sees what's going on and he says, 'That's a bad thing.' And I said, 'Yes it is.'
"But he's very popular still," adds Delgado, who is not related to the Mets first baseman of the same name. "He's almost like a legend around here. He grew up here so he represents Washington Heights."
A tightknit, densely developed neighborhood on the northern tip of Manhattan, Washington Heights has evolved over the years, its population going from predominantly Irish to Jewish to Greek, then to Cuban and Puerto Rican.
