Yoenis Cespedes has turned heads with his special skills

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. It was a few hours before a game early in the 2012 season, and then-Texas Rangers catcher Mike Napoli was minding his own business, working out in the weight room at the Oakland Coliseum.

And thats when he got an eye-popping first look at Yoenis Cespedes.

Cespy walks into the gym in Oakland, picks up two (90-pound dumbbells) and starts warming up, Napoli recalled before the Red Sox continued their four-game series against the Tampa Bay Rays last night at Tropicana Field. I was like, Um, OK, this guys strong.

As first impressions go, Rusney Castillo will have a tough time topping that.

With the Red Sox $72.5million Cuban center fielder set to be unveiled today in a rookie-level Gulf Coast League game in Fort Myers, were reminded of the splash made by Cespedes, his countryman and soon-to-be-teammate in the outfield who has a distinct flare for the dramatic.

Cespedes already was a star in Cuba when he batted .458 in the 2009 World Baseball Classic, his first widespread exposure on the international scene. Two years later, after defecting from Cuba and being declared a free agent by Major League Baseball, his associates released a 20-minute YouTube video that opened with Star Wars-style rolling text and featured clips of him hitting, running and throwing, to say nothing of showing off a 45-inch vertical leap and 1,300-pound leg press and even roasting a pig on a spit.

It didnt take long for more than a dozen teams, including the Oakland As, to inquire with agent Adam Katz about setting up workouts.

I think color is a great word for it, said Red Sox reliever Craig Breslow, who recalled hearing about the video through former As teammates. You can read scouting reports, you can read commentary on what kind of player somebody is, but until you see them, the visual cues are so powerful.

I feel like a highlight/promotional video was brilliant. You get this kind of like larger-than-life cartoonish presence, and it seems as though he also has lived up to that, to his credit.

Indeed, Cespedes has made quite an impression on the Red Sox. And it isnt merely that he entered last nights game with a team-leading 22 RBI since being acquired in the July 31 blockbuster that sent ace Jon Lester and popular outfielder Jonny Gomes to Oakland.

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Yoenis Cespedes has turned heads with his special skills

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