He is what he is.

That may not sound like much, but in baseball, it is eloquence, a commonly accepted bit of poetic shorthand to describe a player over the age of 30. There are variations of this expression, such as "a .270 hitter is a .270 hitter" and "his numbers will be what his numbers have always been." But they all come down to the same thing: "If you can't trust a player's track record, what can you trust?"

Well, 33-year-old Luis Gonzalez -- who in his last three seasons has hit more home runs than he hit in his first eight major league seasons combined, and is now, after one .300 (on the nose) season in his 20s, headed for his second .330-plus in his 30s -- could say to all of us: "Trust this."

Actually, Gonzo would never say anything like that because, well, he is who he is: the nicest man in baseball, a guy equally loved by megadollar stars and league-minimum rookies, respected by coaches, opponents and clubhouse workers, hotel shuttle drivers, writers, broadcasters and, well, everybody. "If you don't like Luis Gonzalez," says often-ornery Randy Johnson, "then you don't like people. It's as simple as that."

Too good to be true? Not if you know how Gonzo likes to credit his mom and grandmother for much of his success, because they used to drive him around Tampa as a kid to watch Wade Boggs and Fred McGriff hit. Or that he signed a free agent contract with Detroit three years ago because his sister lived in Michigan, and he wanted to be close to her. Or that he says the day his major league career really turned around was the day his wife, Christine, delivered triplets in 1998 and made him realize 0-for-4's aren't really that important after all. Or that, when you ask him about the golf courses in Scottsdale, he says, "I play only in the charity events. Golf is time away from my kids."

Quick reminder: This is a major league superstar we're talking about here, not some 25th man thankful that he's not sharing a room with a teammate at the Days Inn in Tucson. As for that 25th guy, well, chances are Gonzo's making sure he's all right too.

"If he were ever to win the MVP, there would be little celebrations all over the country," says Arizona bullpen coach Glenn Sherlock. "For all the dinner checks he's picked up for minor leaguers during spring training, all the first names of people he's remembered, not only here in Arizona, but from stadium to stadium, from secretaries to security guys. Gonzo is nice to everybody."

Many players talk, with good reason, about the pressure to produce and the grueling nature of the long season. Gonzalez tells you straight up that being a major leaguer is like "going to play in a tree house with your friends every day. It's that much fun."

Which gets us back to our original thought.

See, Gonzalez didn't just start having "that much fun" when he began disproving the old "he is what he is" thing at age 30. The Gonzo who won the home run contest at the All-Star Game, the guy who is threatening to win the Triple Crown and to break Babe Ruth's record for total bases in a season, was the nicest guy in baseball back in his .270, 13-homers-a-season days. "Always a great guy," says D-Backs first baseman Mark Grace, who played with Gonzalez on the 1995 and 1996 Cubs. "And a good player. Punch in his .275, his 12 and his 80, and know he's going to help your team in the clubhouse because he's a positive guy and is bilingual. But now you punch in those insane numbers he's got, and the fact that he's still the same great guy and, well, what can you say?"

Try this: He is what he is -- but not what he was.

"I've just always believed you keep trying to get better," Gonzalez says. "Whether it's lifting weights or making adjustments in your stance or swing or your game plan. I mean, it wasn't like I was trying to prove anything to anybody, or that I knew this power was in me, just untapped. It was just me trying to be a good pro, trying to improve my game every day and working hard in the off-season to get stronger."

What actually got Gonzalez rolling was a slightly paradoxical hitting philosophy. After signing with the Tigers in 1997, he tried something that puts most flat-swinging, hit-to-all-fields hitters like himself into epic slumps: He started consciously trying to pull the ball. "One day in BP at the old Tiger Stadium," Gonzalez recalls, "Bobby Higginson said to me, 'You gotta learn to hook the ball to play in this park to take advantage of the short porch in right. If you don't, you're going be playing to the big part of the park all season.' "

So Gonzalez opened up his stance a little. And then a little more. "I've always been a hitter who dives into the ball," Gonzalez says. "So, opening up my stance just helped me see the ball with both eyes and helped me clear my hips on the inside pitch." He popped 23 home runs -- 15 at Tiger Stadium -- to top his career best by eight. Still, no one was overly impressed. Certainly not the Tigers, who traded him to Arizona at the end of the '98 season for Karim Garcia. And not the D-Backs, who told him he would platoon with Bernard Gilkey.

Only the platoon never materialized: Gilkey had vision problems and Gonzalez hit safely in 49 of his first 50 games as a Diamondback, including a 30-game hitting streak. He was on his way to leading the NL with 206 hits and putting up career bests in homers (26), average (.336), RBIs (111), doubles (45) and runs (112). "My confidence at the plate took off," Gonzalez says. "But the ironic, funny thing is, I was much less analytical about my hitting than ever before in my career."

That's because in June 1998, with the arrival of triplets Megan, Jacob and Alyssa, Gonzalez stopped bringing his bad days -- and the game videos he used to beat himself up with -- home from the ballpark. "I used to stress myself out pretty bad," Gonzalez says. "But when you come home and see three little faces who all want your attention, you realize what's really important. We tried for a long time to have kids. It's something Christine and I wanted so badly. I'd never want to shortchange them."

It's funny Gonzo would use the word "shortchange," because people who know him lead you to believe it's not in his vocabulary. "He's taken it upon himself to be the biggest tipper in baseball," says one NL visitors clubhouse manager. "He comes in and asks on the first day of the series what the best tip I've gotten this year has been, and then he'll top it. [Ed.'s note: Average, about $100. Nice guys give between $200 and $400. No one is nicer than Gonzales in this department.] Calling him a class act doesn't do him justice."

Gonzalez shrugs off this kind of stuff as "friendship dues." If he sees rookies or Arizona PR staffers grabbing a bite to eat in the hotel restaurant, or having a beer in the bar, the check never seems to get past him. If there's something happening in the city where the D-Backs are playing -- like the WWF Raw Is War that was going on in Cincinnati in May -- Gonzalez becomes the team's social coordinator. "Gonzo's got all the hookups," says Arizona reliever Greg Swindell, one of a half-dozen D-Backs ringside with Gonzo for Raw Is War. "Because he never forgets a name or face."

"He's always loved making people smile," says Gonzalez's mother, Ame Silverstein. "To hear people say that he is a good person means more to me than to hear that he is a good ballplayer. All I can say is that he took to the Golden Rule."

Gonzalez's mother and father -- they divorced when Luis was a senior in high school -- came to Tampa from Cuba with their families when they were children. Luis' grandfather worked in the Tampa cigar factory owned by the grandfather of Yankees first baseman Tino Martinez, and Luis spent many summer afternoons unloading trucks with Tino and other neighborhood kids to make a few bucks. Work, however, never got in the way of baseball.

"Ball was everything in Tampa," says Luis, who grew up speaking English with his parents and Spanish with his grandparents. "In one part of town, you had mostly Cuban kids, like me and Tino. In another part of town, mostly African-American kids, like Dwight Gooden and Gary Sheffield. And then the areas that were mostly white, with guys like Dave Magadan and, before him, Wade Boggs. The biggest baseball fans of all were probably my mom and grandmother. They'd drive me all over town to see the good players."

And Luis was one of the good ones too, if not one of the great ones. On his Jefferson High School team he was a skinny second baseman, hitting second in the order. "Just trying to get on base so Tino could drive me home," he says. He went to South Alabama on a scholarship and, after three years, was drafted as a third baseman by the Astros. Every step up the ladder, Luis' skills were categorized with almost backhanded words of praise. Like these, as shared by a Southern League scout who watched Gonzalez play Double-A ball in Columbus, Ga., in 1990. Good. As in, "He's a good player ... won't hurt you." Nice. As in, "Nice player ... not bad in any one phase of the game." Solid. As in, "Solid, fundamental, flat swing ... good gap power."

(The scout now adds, nearly a dozen years later, "You had to love his makeup. Hard worker. Mixed as easily with the Latin kids as with the American kids. No question he'd be a major leaguer.")

"Good," "nice" and "solid" pretty much sum up Gonzalez's first eight years in the big leagues. "Always a tough out," says Reds pitcher Pete Harnisch, a teammate of Gonzalez's in Houston (1991-94). "But he wasn't a real deep threat back then. I used to call him 'Louie Fungo' because he was so skinny. When I got traded to the Mets in 1994, I had some success pitching him away, even though the book was to pitch him in, because I always felt like he couldn't take me out the other way. Now? He'll hurt you bad."

Gonzalez says he's simply gotten stronger through weight training, though he's still got a body (6'2", 195) that's more sinew than bulk. His swing has become even more fluid and effortless than before. Says Gonzalez, "I think it started that year in Detroit, when I worked really hard with a personal strength coach in the off-season. Immediately, the ball felt lighter coming off the bat. That plus the change in my stance ... you see the results, you get it in your mind that you've discovered something, and it's like an addiction. You keep adding things. Like, this year I started going to a stretching class with my wife, three days a week when we're home, at a gym near our house. Now, with the kind of season I'm having, I obviously gotta keep doing that."

Who wouldn't want to bottle what Gonzalez has going on this season? Through 92 games, he had a .353 batting average (he hadn't dipped below .350 since June 14), already-a-career-high 36 home runs, a league-leading 90 RBIs, a .446 on-base percentage and a .737 slugging percentage. And though it doesn't have the sex appeal of, say, 70 home runs, he's on pace for 458 total bases, which would beat by one Babe Ruth's 80-year-old record. Even Barry Bonds is saying, "You can't compare what Luis has done with what I've done. He's done a lot more. His team is in first place. And except for homers, his numbers are much better than mine."

Even before this whole thing went nuts on him, before winning the home run contest and hooking onto Bonds' fender, Gonzo admitted he felt a little giddiness over how far he'd come. Sitting in the visitors clubhouse at Cinergy Field in May, the morning after the Raw Is War outing, he said, "There are times when you just want to roll with it. But there are times where I'm like, whew, this is kinda crazy. I mean, I've always just tried to be this steady, everyday kinda guy."

As he spoke, a few eavesdropping teammates interrupted. "When you've got a minute," said pitcher Brian Anderson, "we want to discuss some marketing plans we've got for Gonzo.com." He held up a crude drawing of their make-believe site and the group laughed hard over a joke they were not quite ready to share.

"They're not believing this either," Gonzalez said, laughing and scratching his stubbly goatee. "And they're going to keep me in my place and make sure I don't go big-time on them."

No worries there. They know him too well. Gonzo is what Gonzo is.

This article appears in the August 6 issue of ESPN The Magazine.