Ordoñez calm in N.Y.: `The boy has no nerves'

Down on the field, coach Rafael Landestoy is hitting hard grounders toward shortstop, crack-crack-crack. Tiny Rey Ordoñez, the remarkable rookie, scoops up each shot as naturally as a baby takes a breath. Over and over, Ordoñez takes the ball and flips it perfectly behind his back to the second baseman. It's like watching a magician practice, with the stadium still empty and the big show still an hour away.

``Rey is already as good as Ozzie Smith was in his prime, and the future promises he'll be better,'' Landestoy says, taking another swing.

Landestoy is Ordoñez's interpreter and chaperon, in charge of protecting a Mets treasure. He is asked for for his favorite aaaah-inspiring Ordoñez play -- everyone in the Mets organization has one -- but he interrupts the question.

``You want just one?'' he says, laughing. ``I've got a bunch.''

This is where baseball's best legends are made, in tales told near a batting cage and in plays that make the diamond sparkle, not on some screaming stadium scoreboard or on packaged commercials asking you to vote Griffey for president. Mets Manager Dallas Green had heard all his minor-league people raving wildly about Ordoñez -- saying the kid was making plays they had never seen anybody make -- and Green was so skeptical.

``But he's every bit as good as advertised,'' Green says. ``All they adjectives they used, you can see why they were searching for words to describe him.''

Green is asked if Ordoñez has the skills to be the best shortstop ever, and he doesn't even pause.

``That's fair,'' he says.

Ordoñez defected from Cuba in 1993, hopping a fence in Buffalo and jumping into a friend's red Cadillac. He flew to Miami first class, drinking champagne all the way, and has continued his climb into the clouds. Jose Vizcaino was this team's MVP last year, at shortstop. This year, he was told to move to second base.

``The plays I make are unprepared,'' Ordoñez says in Spanish. ``The ball comes and I catch it. The play happens too fast for me to realize what I've done. When I see the replay, that's when I say, `Damn, that was a great play.' ''

Ordoñez, 5-9, 159 pounds, has already had more impact than any other Cuban defector. He came into Wednesday's 4-1 loss to Florida leading the team in hitting at .333, but focusing on Ordoñez's hitting is like talking about Dan Marino's handoffs. He hit .214 at Triple A last year and got promoted anyway.

Ordoñez, 23, is too young and too unfamiliar with this country's ways to feel the pressures of being the starting shortstop in a city as hostile as New York. The Yankees give Kenny Rogers $20 million and start him in the bullpen, so afraid the New York experience will melt his mind. Ordoñez, who speaks very little English, doesn't understand.

``The ball is the same,'' says his father-in-law, Arnaldo Fiallo. ``And the boy has no nerves anyway.''

Ordoñez doesn't stay at the elegant team hotel. He prefers Fiallo's home in Hialeah, eating his wife's bistec and arroz con frijoles. He declined a limo ride the team offered the other day. He preferred Fiallo pick him up at the airport.

Fiallo's family, seven people strong, watched Ordoñez dive into the hole in Wednesday's second inning, easy as can be, and throw out Charles Johnson by a step. Ordoñez was in short left field when he let go of the ball. It was a play no Marlin shortstop has made, ever. It didn't rank in Ordoñez's Top 10.

His best major-league play may have been one of his first. On a wet Opening Day, he grabbed a relay throw on the third-base foul line, a 150 feet from home, and threw out quick Royce Clayton at the plate. Ordoñez was on his knees at the time.

One of the players in the other dugout was stunned.

``It's safe to say that he's the second coming of me,'' Ozzie Smith said.