ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. | His story is baseball&#8217;s version of the American dream, of persistence turning humble beginnings into eventual stardom.</p><p>Back then, no scouts would talk to Evan Longoria. Now, he bats cleanup in the playoffs. Back then, no colleges offered him scholarship money. Now, he hits home runs off Jon Lester and over Green Monsters.</p><p>The Rays drafted him third overall, gave him a guarantee of $17 million after his first week in the big leagues, and whenever this wild ride is over, Evan Longoria will wait to be named the American League&#8217;s Rookie of the Year.</p><p>All for a kid no college coach or pro scout thought was worth the time just six years ago. True story.</p><p>Is this a great country or what?</p><p>&#8220;Yeah,&#8221; says Mario Cordero, who coached Longoria&#8217;s senior year at St. John Bosco High in Bellflower, Calif. &#8220;Lot of people missed out on this guy.&#8221;</p><p>Baseball has a long line of superstars once overlooked by scouts, perhaps most notably Mike Piazza and Albert Pujols.</p><p>But there are circumstances in Longoria&#8217;s emergence that have at least one college changing the way they recruit, and at least one scout asking for his profession to adjust.</p><p>&#8226; &#8226; &#8226;</p><p>Oh, this part of Longoria&#8217;s story is as unnecessary as it is untold. His emergence alone &#8212; like that of the $44 million roster that surrounds him &#8212; is already one of baseball&#8217;s feel-good tales.</p><p>Just five summers ago, he took a vacation to New York with his mom. Some friends hooked them up with seats at Yankee Stadium, and Longoria watched from the stands while wearing a Derek Jeter shirt.</p><p>Then this year, his first in the big leagues, he made the All-Star team along with Jeter and lockered next to Manny Ramirez.</p><p>Everybody said that Longoria&#8217;s was the most advanced bat available in the 2006 draft. The Royals had the top overall pick that year, had just taken third baseman Alex Gordon the year before, and went with pitcher Luke Hochevar.</p><p>The Rockies wanted pitching, too, so they took Stanford righty Greg Reynolds, leaving the talent-hungry Rays to take Longoria, who signed in about 20 minutes.</p><p>He went from low Class A, to high Class A, to Class AA that first summer, then to Class AAA in 2007. The Rays called him up in April, his fourth promotion after 205 games.</p><p>Longoria hit the first two postseason pitches he saw for home runs. He&#8217;s hit four more so far, and this offseason he&#8217;ll be a postseason star shopping for a house big enough for a memorabilia room. That&#8217;ll be a nice place for the bat he had all of his All-Star teammates sign.</p><p>He says the best part of his new fame is getting into restaurants, and says that he&#8217;s learning to adapt to the public lifestyle, watching his words around reporters and actions in public.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s cool,&#8221; he says.</p><p>Yeah, it&#8217;s come so fast and so easy it feels like some sort of plan, no big deal, and the front that Longoria puts up is all the more convincing. But it&#8217;s important to remember that it&#8217;s just that, a front.</p><p>After all, how could a kid not worth of scholarship money out of high school not be at least a little awed by all of this?</p><p>&#8226; &#8226; &#8226;</p><p>It took a strange conspiracy of events and circumstance to keep Longoria hidden. It had to be some JFK-type stuff, a talent like this staying hush-hushed in southern California, where every traffic jam includes a dozen scouts.</p><p>The easy part is to mention that Longoria didn&#8217;t make the summer circuit of All-Star games that college coaches and pro scouts love. He began his senior year at 16 and graduated at 17, so he was always young for his class.