Manny Ramirez calmly stepped to the plate, greeted with the response from Sky Sox fans that you would expect for one of baseball’s most despised players, a two-time drug cheat.

From the bleachers near the concourse, an angry woman yelled, “Washed up, has-been!”

That may be true. Ramirez is desperately trying to break back into the majors. His image has been ruined by a pair of suspensions for performance-enhancing drugs. He’s 40, and he’s dealing with a tight left hamstring that has the Athletics hesitant about giving him an opportunity. And he’s batting .255, with a propensity for grounding into double plays.

But during his brief stay in Colorado Springs, Ramirez showed he’s not a villain, and he proved he can still hit, helping the Sacramento River Cats take three of four games in the series, the finale an 8-2 victory against the Sky Sox on Sunday at Security Service Field.

A 1-for-4 effort by Ramirez put him 4-for-14 on this trip, and his two-run double off the right-field wall against Rob Scahill (3-8) in the third inning gave Sacramento (41-23) a 2-0 lead that grew to 5-1 in the fifth and 8-1 in the sixth. Graham Godfrey (5-0) limited the Sky Sox (29-34) to five base runners, allowing one run on two hits in eight innings.

Before Thursday’s rain-shortened game, Ramirez, a 12-time All-Star with 555 home runs over 19 seasons of experience in the majors, turned down an interview request from The Gazette, and he denied a dozen autograph seekers outside the Sacramento clubhouse. He has been heckled. He has been booed. No different than the way Giants fans treated him when he played for Los Angeles or Yankees fans treated him when he starred for Boston.

Ramirez posed for pictures with several Sky Sox players Friday before the second game of a doubleheader, and he signed some autographs for fans through the weekend. Photos of Ramirez interacting with shoppers at Whole Foods Market even surfaced on Facebook, where Springs resident Lim Pak-Cuprisin posted Saturday, “Manny made me very happy today. I always knew that he was a really good guy! … He sure hit a home run with me.”

Mirroring Barry Bonds late in his career, Ramirez is awfully selective with the media. He doesn’t speak with every reporter who shoves a microphone in his face, and he talks only when he wants to talk. In fact, in three-plus weeks with the River Cats, he hasn’t spoken on air with the team’s radio broadcaster. However, unlike Bonds, Ramirez is forced to fly commercially and stay in less-than-luxury hotels on the road, albeit without a roommate.

Jerseys of Ramirez were a common sight at Security Service Field, and he no doubt put more bodies in seats. On Sunday, a woman seated next to Sacramento’s dugout remarked, “Manny is in a good mood. I even saw him smile a bit.” River Cats second baseman Eric Sogard dubbed Ramirez “a great teammate. He’s always there early. He leaves late. He’s friendly to everybody. It’s fun having him around, just getting what we can from him.”

Sogard recalls rooting for Ramirez since he was a Red Sox fan as a teenager. “We’ll pick his brain once in a while,” he said. “Surprisingly, he has been asking us a lot of questions, too.” He added, “He still has that beautiful swing. I think it’s coming. It’s slowly getting there. Hopefully, he can lock it in pretty soon and get up there with the big club.”

Contact Brian Gomez: 719-636-0256 or brian.gomez@gazettedev.gazette.com. Facebook: Brian Gomez. Twitter: @gazetteskysox. Google+: Brian Gomez. For the Sky Sox homepage, visit http://www.gazettedev.gazette.com/sections/roxsox. For the Sky Sox blog, visit http://skysox.freedomblogging.com.