Although Longoria also played water polo in high school, he gave that up at 15 to concentrate on baseball, joining a summer wood bat league, working on his hitting and lifting weights.
"We tried to give him a firm base," says his father, Michael, a maintenance worker with the Long Beach Unified School District. "We taught him right from wrong, kept him grounded."
And his son was not discouraged when he wasn't drafted out of high school. It made him work harder, the father says, work that paid off three years later when Longoria was the third player selected in the 2006 draft.
"I can't even comprehend it," Michael Longoria says of all that has happened. "Really, the odds of a kid starting in T-ball and making the major leagues is pretty astronomical."
The 23-year-old Longoria played in only 205 games in the minors, batting .301 with 44 home runs and 154 RBIs, before being called up to the big leagues 10 games into last season. The Rays had never come close to a winning season in their 10-year history, but in the span between Longoria's promotion and the broken wrist that sidelined him for a month, Tampa Bay was 63-41 en route to a playoff berth. Once there, Longoria made more history, hitting a home run in each of his first two swings and setting a rookie record with six home runs in his first nine postseason games.
"He just makes the lineup different," says Carl Crawford, who suffered through six losing seasons in Tampa Bay before Longoria arrived. "You can feel the difference. There's only a few guys that can bring that kind of presence."
And Longoria, who finished the year with a .272 average, 27 home runs and 85 RBIs in 122 games, might have made an even bigger contribution on defense. In 2007, Tampa had the second-worst fielding percentage in baseball and Rays pitchers gave up a major league-high 944 runs. A year later, the Rays had the third-best fielding percentage in the majors, cutting their runs given up by 273.
"Damn, he can play third base," marvels senior advisor Don Zimmer, who has spent 61 years in professional baseball. "From what I've seen, you talk about Brooks Robinson, [Graig] Nettles, Mike Schmidt. He don't have to take a back seat to none of [them]. He plays the slow-hit ball as good as anybody. Double plays, he gets the ball to second base quicker than anybody.
"He's a hell of a player. I can't say no more than when I put him in the category of those guys that I named."
