FORT MYERS, Fla. – First it was awe, then surprise.

Jason Bay destroyed a baseball against the Minnesota Twins in the spring training contest on St. Patrick’s Day. The shot carried well over the 410 feet to straightaway centerfield at City of Palms Park. In fact, it crashed atop the batter’s eye above the fence in dead center, a 40-foot tall concrete installment covered black fabric to improve the batter’s view of pitches.

The consensus estimate was that the blast would have carried some 450 feet. Jason Varitek, now in his 12th spring in Fort Myers, said that it was the first time he’d ever seen a batter launch a ball to that nether region in a game. Jacoby Ellsbury, after having been removed from the game, was so moved after seeing the blast on TV in the Sox clubhouse that he sprinted back to the dugout.

“I had to run out to congratulate him,” said Ellsbury. “You don’t see too many home runs like that. Over the batter’s eye like that? Not too many people can hit them like that.”

After the fact, Bay conceded that it was one of the more monumental homers he’d ever struck, though he could not recall details of other shots in its class. (“I haven’t kept a tape measure,” he said. “(But) I don’t hit 500 footers. That one was up there.) Still, it was not a complete bolt from the blue.

Though Bay is physically rather unassuming – listed at 6-foot-2, he is tall and wiry strong, rather than exhibiting a weight lifter’s build – and attitude, he is a force to be reckoned with. Though Bay’s longest measured shot as a Sox last summer (according to Hit Tracker Online) was 420 feet, he hit a homer that was measured at 440 feet last summer as a Pirate.

Bay hems and haws when confronted about his ability to drive the ball. He denies the suggestion that he is a slugger, leaving such a designation to the likes of teammate David Ortiz.

“In batting practice, the harder I try (to hit home runs), the worse I get,” said Bay. “I can’t put on a display in B.P. I can barely hit a ball over the wall. That’s the reason I don’t consider myself a home run hitter, per se…I consider myself a doubles hitter that can occasionally go out of the ballpark. The statistics might say otherwise, but that’s how I view myself.”

The notion was reinforced in 2005, when Bay took part in the Home Run Derby during the All-Star festivities at Comerica Park in Detroit. His regular-season numbers placed him amongst the game’s elite sluggers. His performance in that event (video here) did not.

“I didn’t hit any home runs, which is indicative of my B.P. power,” said Bay. “The harder I try, the worse it gets. That was a tell-tale sign right there.”

Even so, Bay’s self-description as a doubles hitter seems flawed. His stature among the game’s sluggers, at least statistically, is unimpeachable. He clears the fences with a frequency achieved by few others in the game.

Bay is one of 18 hitters in the majors to hit at least 20 homers in each of the past five years, positioning him squarely among the who’s who of the game’s power hitters. He has three 30-homer seasons in the last four years, the same number as such players as Ortiz, Ryan Howard and Manny Ramirez. Yet even that evidence is insufficient to change how Bay views himself.

"I didn’t really realize the magnitude of (hitting 30 homers)," said Bay. "Looking back on it now, it’s a little tougher than I thought it might have been. But then, like anything, once you do it, you start to expect it. For what I do and what I’ve done, I’m never going to view myself as a home run hitter. I never have.

Others do. Bay's performance is all the more impressive given that he has spent most of his career playing at Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, a venue that is typically unkind to power hitters.

“He may not resemble the body type that you think is going to hit the ball 450 feet, but when you watch him hit and see his hand strength, there’s legitimate power,” said Sox outfielder/first baseman Mark Kotsay, whose trip to the disabled list with the Padres in 2003 led to Bay’s first big-league call-up. “He played at PNC Park. That’s a big park. When you’re hitting 30 homers in that park, you’re squaring it up. They’re not cheap home runs.”

That being the case, perhaps more indicative of Bay’s power is the fact that he ranks 12th in the majors in road homers over the past five seasons with 83, just one behind Yankees slugger Mark Teixeira. As such, there is reason to think that Bay could improve on his already impressive homer totals of recent years. At PNC Park, Bay hit 61 homers in 365 career games, or once roughly every six contests. Elsewhere, he’s hit 88 homers in 406 contests, an average of one for every 4.6 contests. (It is worth mentioning, however, that he hit just three of his nine Red Sox regular-season homers at Fenway Park last year, while all three of his playoff homers were on the road.)

Bay does not have the all-or-nothing swing sometimes seen in sluggers with his statistical profile. His stroke is compact, and makes little use of his lower half. Nonetheless, he is capable of driving the ball on occasion into another zip code.

How?

Varitek suggested that Bay’s height allows him to generate tremendous upper body leverage. Bay, meanwhile, has heard a common refrain since his Little League days.

“It’s my hands. I’ve been told from, like, (12) years old on that I have quick wrists or quick hands,” said Bay. “I don’t use a lot of my lower half. I’m not a big guy. I’ve just been able to generate a lot of bat speed with my hands and my wrists.”

Regardless of the source of his power, there is little fault to find in Bay’s profile as a hitter. He is a career .282 hitter with a .375 OBP and .516 slugging mark. He represents a legitimate heart-of-the-order contributor, and someone on whom the Sox will lean in their efforts to remain among the offensive elite.

Based on his year-to-year consistency, there is little reason to doubt what Bay might offer to his club. Instead, by the end of his first full year in Boston, Bay may emerge with a reputation to match his statistics as a power hitter.

“I think he’s making his name for himself, especially being in a big market and the success that he had for himself last year, including the postseason,” said Kotsay. “This year will be a big year for him to be on center stage from the get-go. He’s done it, he knows he can do it.”