Manny Ramirez Hits 500th Home Run

Congratulations to Manny Ramirez, who hit the 500th home run of his career last night:

Ramirez drove the first pitch into the seats in right-center in the seventh inning. The Red Sox star watched the flight of the ball, then took off around the bases.

"As soon as I hit it, I knew it was gone," Ramirez said. "So I was happy to move on."

"I'm happy, you know, about everything I accomplished in life," Ramirez said. "Not everybody has the chance to go and get to 500. I'm just proud to do it."

The drive enabled Ramirez to become only the seventh player in baseball history with 500 homers, 1,500 RBIs, 1,000 walks, 475 doubles and a .300 batting average. The others are Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Mel Ott, Babe Ruth, Frank Thomas and Ted Williams.

Ramirez is the 12th-youngest player to hit 500 home runs; his 36th birthday was on Friday. The youngest was Alex Rodriguez, who did it eight days after his 32nd birthday.

Ramirez is now four homers short of tying Eddie Murray for 23rd on the career list. Barry Bonds is baseball's career leader with 762. (ESPN)

Manny Ramirez is quite simply a hitting machine and probably one of the greatest hitters of his lifetime. He may catch alot of crap for his "Manny being Manny" antics but the guy can hit a baseball as good as anyone ever has. It will be interesting to see how long Manny continues to play and how many home runs he eventually hits. I would say he has a really good shot at 600 home runs, which would probably require him to play 3 more seasons after this one. He'll probably finish somewhere between 600-620 home runs for his career.