FORT MYERS, Fla. – Mention Kirk Gibson’s name around Trot Nixon, and his eyes immediately flash with appreciation.

“Kirk Gibson’s kind of like an idol to me. He played the game and played it hard,” the Boston Red Sox right fielder said. “He played it with tremendous passion and he was kind of one of those – I don’t mean this in a bad way – a brown-bagger, you know? He kind of wears his hard hat every day. It would have been awesome to play with someone like him.”

The fact that Christopher Trotman Nixon so respects the former Detroit and Los Angeles outfielder and readily identifies with his game should come as no surprise to any Sox fan familiar with Nixon’s approach.

“I don’t have all the athletic ability in the world, but I try to make up for it with heart,” said Nixon, who some teammates call “Volcano” because of his fiery nature. “I don’t know the game’s history as much as I’d like to, but when you come up in pro ball, you have a tendency to know your niche in the game and that allows you to respect certain players, and people like Kirk Gibson are the ones I respect.”

So it goes to reason that Nixon, who grew up in Wilmington, N.C., watching cable superstation teams like Atlanta, Chicago and New York in the 1980s, latched onto former New York Met and Philadelphia Phillie Lenny Dykstra, who earned the nickname “Nails” because of his tough, take-no-prisoners playing style.

“I enjoy watching the game and I really liked watching Lenny Dykstra and Don Mattingly. I wasn’t very fortunate to be able to see a lot of games on TV, like you can nowadays,” he recalled. “Back then, I was obligated to watch the Cubs, Mets and Braves and whoever they played.

“I always kind of thought Lenny brought it to the table every day and that’s what’s so fun about this clubhouse is everybody does the same thing.”

Like Gibson, Nixon has been “snakebit” with injuries throughout his career. Entering his seventh big league season, the soon-to-be-31-year-old Nixon has had only three relatively injury-free seasons. Last year, he missed 114 regular season games because of a slight disk herniation in his back and a strained left quadricep.

It’s not that Nixon is prone to injuries because he’s in poor shape, a klutz, or sickly. Rather, it’s his style of play that takes its toll on his 6-foot-2, 210-pound frame. There is no such thing as cruise control or half speed with this guy.

“Yeah, maybe I am snakebit, but I was probably kind of out of shape when I came back from Miami last year, and that’s probably how I hurt myself,” the lefthander admitted. “I was in such a rush to hurry up and get back, I probably did some things I shouldn’t have, even though one of them was running the bases really hard.

“I never really let [the quad] get healthy so I went back on the DL [disabled list]. It was just some buzzard luck. I wanted to play real bad and that was probably my downfall.”

He made up for lost time in the playoffs, hitting .255 with a home run, four doubles, eight RBIs and five runs. He hit a robust .357 with three RBIs in the World Series.

“He’s just a gamer. He’s a guy you want on your team,” said utility player David McCarty, Nixon’s teammate the last three seasons. “He’s going to go out there, bust his butt, and give it everything he’s got every day and do whatever it takes to win.”

Five months and lots of offseason conditioning later, the longest-tenured player in Boston’s organization has adopted a less reckless, more mature approach.

“You learn. Obviously the best thing is to listen to your body. If it’s not healthy, don’t go out and push the envelope because you make it worse for yourself, your teammates, and your team,” said the seventh overall pick of the 1993 draft. “Don’t get me wrong. You can’t take life for granted because we’re not guaranteed a tomorrow. You have to adopt a mindset where you’re not going to back down, but I do need to listen to my body because I don’t want my career to end because of stupidity.”

That would be bad for Boston as well. Nixon is eighth among Red Sox players (who have at least 1,500 at-bats during their careers, with a .496 slugging percentage. He is already among the top 25 Red Sox alumni in on-base percentage (19th at .367) and home runs (24th with 112).

Nixon is also a solid, yet under-rated, defensive player.

“I think the thing that surprised me the most about him is how good a defensive outfielder he is,” McCarty said. “You know, you look at him and he’s pretty put together so you wouldn’t figure he could cover as much ground as he does, but he does a great job out there.

“He’s a really good athlete. The sliding catches, the diving catches … He’s a smart outfielder, too. You don’t see him take bad routes on balls or play hops into tough hops. He takes good angles and gets good reads, so he’s an intelligent player out there.”

The now-healthy Nixon came very close to not venturing across the border of Red Sox Nation. North Carolina’s high school baseball and football player of the year had a big choice to make as a 1993 first-round draft pick: Sign with the Sox and get guaranteed bonus money or sign a full football scholarship from North Carolina State. How close did he come to picking pigskin?

“I don’t know. It depended on the football team and the way they treated me, but baseball’s my first love and I wanted to go ahead and play pro baseball,” he recalled. “Could it have come out any better? “No. Not at all. Not in this organization.”

Nixon, who has been a fan favorite almost since his substantive big league debut in 1998, will never be one to take his career for granted.

“I’m very blessed to have an opportunity to play professional baseball for the greatest organization in professional baseball,” he said, the conviction evident in his voice. “It was a dream come true for me to play in the fall classic and win, but the biggest thing is being in this organization that’s been yearning for a championship for 86 years. That meant that much more to me.”

Nixon’s a Carolina boy through and through, but New England has grown on him.

“It’s not just with me, it’s my family,” admitted Nixon, who lives in Wilmington with his wife Kathryn and sons Chase, 3, and Luke, 6 months. “There are some phenomenal people up there.”

Still, don’t look for him to settle in the Bay State once he hangs up his spikes.

“No, I’ll settle back in North Carolina when I’m done,” he said.

When that day does come, how would the unassuming Nixon like to be recalled?

“Maybe that I brought it every day. You know, you respect those guys who go to work everyday like construction workers who work their tails off,” he said. “My father grew up on a farm and I’ve seen it firsthand. I know what these farmers go through. They put in some tremendous hours and that’s hard work and labor.”

“You play to win and so forth, but you play this game and play it right and try not to disrespect it because it’s done so much for us,” he added. “I think the biggest thing is just that they have respect for me after I’m done … Maybe that I earned their respect, both as a player and a person.”