Phillies' star Bobby Abreu deserves greater recognition: steady outfielder wants to improve his productive play and help club capture a post-season invitation.(Biography)

AROUND THE MAJOR LEAGUES, Bobby Abreu is known--or unknown--as one of the game's most underrated players. Around Philadelphia, where Abreu plays right field for the Phillies, he's known as much for what he does off the field as what he does on the field.

Abreu batted .301 for the Phillies last year with 30 homers and 105 RBI. It marked the third time in his seven-year career he has gone over 100 RBI and the second time he's hit the 30-home run mark. He's established himself as one of the best fight fielders in the game and he's gone virtually unnoticed for a Phillies team that hasn't made the playoffs since 1993.

He doesn't get a lot of publicity despite putting up the big numbers, but the work he does off the field makes him very well-known in Philadelphia. He was nominated for the Roberto Clemente Award after the 2004 season, an honor given to the player who best exemplifies the qualities portrayed by Clemente, a humanitarian who died in a plane crash trying to deliver goods to Nicaragua after a devastating hurricane.

In 2004, Abreu made appearances for more than 35 charities in the Philadelphia area and, back in his home country of Venezuela, he dons a Santa Claus outfit every year and presents gifts to sick children.

"Things really aren't good there," Abreu said of his homeland. "You see these bad things happening on TV and you never know when it's going to end. I just want to do my part."

As far as his life on the baseball field, Abreu has been doing more than his part. He has quietly become one of the best players in the majors and doesn't plan to stop. He came up in the Houston Astros organization and never made enough of a splash to keep the Astros interested. They left him available in the 1998 expansion draft when the Tampa Bay Devil Rays made him their third pick. Today, the Devil Rays could field an outfield of Abreu, Carl Crawford, and Rocco Baldelli, but they didn't see Abreu's potential either. One day after taking Abreu in the draft, they traded him to the Phillies for shortstop Kevin Stocker who never made an impact in Tampa.

The Phillies immediately named Abreu their everyday right fielder after a strong spring training, and he hit .312 in 151 games in 1998. He followed it with a career-high .335 average in 1999 and has remained consistent ever since.