By Hudson Morgan

updated 1:08 p.m. ET Feb. 22, 2008

It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment that Red Sox Nation realized their rookie Jacoby Ellsbury was the Baby Jesus in cleats. Was it during his third major league game, against the Rangers last summer, when he reached home all the way from second base on a wild pitch? Was it Game Three of the World Series, when he hit three doubles — and a single, just for the hell of it — en route to batting .438 in the Series? Or was it the bottom of the ninth inning in Game Four, two outs away from the title, when he chased down that missile of a fly ball from Jamey Carroll with a leaping catch into the left field wall, dashing the Colorado Rockies' final hopes?

Regardless of when it happened, Ellsbury has become the latest vessel for great expectations in Boston — a place that puts the "cult" in sports subculture — and his life will never be the same. "Going to the mall, normally I could just cruise through," he recalls. "Now, it's totally different. Girls will be shaking to meet me. It's unbelievable." The fresh-faced 24-year-old outfielder, clad in a T-shirt, jeans, and black windbreaker that make him look more superfan than superstar, is unwinding in an office at Velocity Sports, his gym and off-season sanctuary in Portland, Oregon, a few hours from the small farm town where he grew up. It's a world away from Fenway Park, but the World Series victory, which reignited hope of a dynasty for the first time in Boston since the Kennedys came to town, still lingers in the mind. "As a Little Leaguer, you put yourself in those situations, that ultimate stage," he says. "It was a dream come true."

More like a dream that Ellsbury made true. He started the 2007 season in dreary Double A, where careers can stall, and with quiet diligence, Hoover-like fielding, and that you-got-it-or-you-don't athletic X-factor, reached Triple A and, come October, snagged a spot on the playoff roster. Most remarkably, though, is that Ellsbury did it in so few major league at-bats (116) that he's still eligible for Rookie of the Year this season. "It's not the easiest thing in the world to come to Boston when you're a young kid and you've never been through it before," Sox manager Terry Francona tells me. "We put him in some pretty important situations, and he competed, and he didn't back down. Usually we live and die by the home run, but he brought a speed that we hadn't seen. He can fly."

Ellsbury doesn't so much steal bases as commit grand larceny, and it's easy to imagine him racking up 40 this season. He runs 60 yards in 6.27 seconds — just a hair slower than Carl Lewis — but even more impressive is his mental machinery, which blacks out the ballpark as soon as he bolts for second base. "I don't hear anything. I'm just thinking, 'Get there, get there, they don't have a shot,'?" he says. "In the postseason, I ran faster than I've ever run before. I'm just" — he raises his arms and simulates a very powerful robot running — "choo-choo-choo-choo. And once I slide, that's when I hear the crowd and know that I've made it, when you hear that roar."

Even Ellsbury's namesake connotes speed. His mother is full-blooded Navajo, and his middle name, McCabe, means "Antelope's Feet" in Navajo dialect. The eldest of four brothers, Ellsbury is the first Navajo to play major league baseball, and he lived on Oregon's Warm Springs Indian Reservation before moving to Madras, a remote town of about 5,000. "Playing with the older crowd toughened me up," he says. "I think that just seeing things on the reservation, like fights and stuff like that, it matures you a little quicker." In high school he tri-lettered in baseball, basketball, and football, and when he quit football after his sophomore year to focus on America's pastime, the local faithful were not pleased: "I got rode on so hard. My house got egged just because I stopped." The Tampa Bay Devil Rays drafted him in 2002, but he turned them down for Oregon State University, and three years later, when the Sox gave him a $1.5 million signing bonus, he used it to pay off his father's mortgage and buy his mother a new house. How many rookies do you know who, suddenly flush with cash, spend it on their parents?

That's not to say that Ellsbury hasn't indulged in sports status symbols, whether it's his new blue Escalade, iPhone, or closetful of gleaming sneakers. But while other players might be prone to spending their off-seasons wolfing Krispy Kremes, Ellsbury has been adhering to a butt-kicking regimen at Velocity Sports with his longtime trainer Matt James. They're both wary of revealing their secret recipe, but it's generally a six-day-a-week program of explosive core training, agility work, and conditioning that ranges from normal (upper-body weights, resistance bands, aqua jogging) to new-agey (yoga, pilates, spinning) to nifty (single-leg vertical jumps called "box blasts"). Ellsbury also knows the season is a 162-game marathon, not a sprint, and that he can't fall prey to the head games that consume all-stars (see: Knoblauch, Chuck). "You're gonna have those games where you strike out four times," says Ellsbury, "but it's about having the ability to bounce back."

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