There’s another outfielder named Ramirez wearing No. 24 and crushing huge home runs, and he has arrived on baseball’s biggest stage.
Enter Angels prospect Lucas Ramirez, the son of 12-time All-Star outfielder Manny Ramirez, who made his mark from the start of Team Brazil’s World Baseball Classic opener against Team USA on Friday night at Daikin Park in Houston. Showing flashes of his father’s electric power -- which included a 2004 All-Star Game dinger off Roger Clemens at the very same venue -- Ramirez slugged TWO solo home runs against the U.S. to become the youngest player with a multihomer game in the WBC.
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"This is the best day ever of my life, to be honest," Ramirez said.
Leading off for Brazil in the bottom of the first inning, Ramirez crushed the second pitch thrown by U.S. starter Logan Webb over the wall in right-center field: a 104.1 mph, 392-foot blast off a sinkerballing pitcher often hard to square up. It was the 10th leadoff home run in WBC history and the first of the 2026 event.
"Ever since the qualifiers, I've been envisioning a first-at-bat bomb," Ramirez said. "It is crazy it actually happened. For five months, every time before I go to bed, after I pray, you know, I visualize it. And it happened."
In the bottom of the eighth, the left-handed slugger delivered an impressive swing against tough lefty reliever Gabe Speier. Ramirez connected with a 93.9 mph fastball for a 106.3 mph solo homer hit at an eye-popping 50-degree launch angle -- tied for the highest launch angle on an over-the-fence home run under Statcast tracking (since 2015).
Not bad for a 20-year-old.
That’s right: Ramirez is only 20 years, 49 days old, making him the second-youngest player to hit his first World Baseball Classic homer. Nationals catcher Harry Ford holds the record at 20 years, 19 days old, after a homer for Team Great Britain in the 2023 WBC. (Ford homered the next day, too.) Before Ramirez’s big night, the youngest player to hit multiple homers in a WBC game was Francisco Lindor at 23 years, 117 days old in 2017.
Ramirez also homered off another MLB star this week, taking Rangers ace Jacob deGrom deep in his first at-bat in Wednesday's exhibition game in Surprise, Ariz.
The younger Ramirez -- who bats lefty, unlike his father, by design -- was selected by the Angels in the 17th round of the 2024 Draft. If he does make it to the Major Leagues, the talented outfielder has lofty expectations to meet: Manny won nine Silver Slugger Awards, earned 2004 World Series MVP honors and hit 555 career homers with a .996 OPS.
The same could be said for several of Ramirez’s Brazil teammates whose fathers were MLB stars. Dante Bichette Jr. served as Team Brazil’s starting designated hitter on Friday, while 17-year-old pitcher Joseph Contreras -- the son of 11-year veteran José Contreras -- induced a ground-ball double play off the bat of Aaron Judge during his relief outing.
The most impressive of the bunch, though, was Ramirez, whose power surge in his WBC debut will be remembered for a while.
"I say you go out there with confidence, you can do anything," Ramirez said. "If you say it out loud, it will happen. I am telling you. It will happen."