An Unnecessary Emphasis

Baseball is (and has always been) my favorite sport. In my opinion, it is one of the toughest sports to master. Just think about it: you try to it a sphere that's about 2 inches or so in diameter with a stick that's not much wider. And that sphere can be in any place, and come at you at any speed. It challenges people on their hand-eye coordination and I guess that amount of difficulty at succeeding is what really endears the sport to me. And while a lot of people will disagree with me, I feel that (in light of the difficulty) there is nothing like a low-scoring, hard-fought, close game that leaves you hanging until the final out is recorded. To me, that kind of game is like the 24 of the baseball world (if you are scratching your head from that analogy, 24 is an extremely suspenseful law enforcement TV show where the script seems to change directions at will, and will always keep the resolution in doubt until the end of the season. Needless to say, it is my favorite TV show). The aforementioned dissenters to my opinion may love a blowout or a "double-double" digit score (e.g. 18-14), but to be honest, that kind of a game bores me (although I may not necessarily mind the latter if one of the teams makes a massive comeback during the game). I just lose interest in the action if that kind of game occurs. But it does not diminish from my feelings about the game.

Because of my love of the game, I've been to a more individual games than I can count. Somewhere along the way in all those games has come a lot of knowledge on how the sport should be played. I now know the game so well, that it seems that I actually get ahead of the manager on the field, at times. The problem I see in the sport is that for the last 20-25 years, baseball has gotten away from the basics of the game. The home run has taken over the game, and steroids tarnished its reputation for years. This produced inflated pitcher ERAs and power stats that went through the proverbial roof. While all this offensive circus was going on, public opinion for the baseball player began to deteriorate. Steroid use combined with the Baseball Strike of 1994 painted them in a poor light. No longer were they athletes who played the game competitively just for the fun of it, like baseball players in the early 1900s were seen. They had become machines, driven by stats to get huge mega-multimillion dollar contracts. The average public that once viewed them as boys just playing a game now began to see them as greedy, rich, drug addicts driven by the almighty dollar. The Steroid Era reached it's peak in June of 2002, when one of the players, Ken Caminiti, a known steroid user, was interviewed by the magazine Sports Illustrated. Caminiti was quoted as saying:

"I've made a ton of mistakes. I don't think using steroids is one of them.

"It's no secret what's going on in baseball. At least half the guys are using steroids. They talk about it. They joke about it with each other. The guys who want to protect themselves or their image by lying have that right. Me? I'm at the point in my career where I've done just about every bad thing you can do. I try to walk with my head up. I don't have to hold my tongue. I don't want to hurt teammates or friends. But I've got nothing to hide.

"If a young player were to ask me what to do. I'm not going to tell him it's bad. Look at all the money in the game: You have a chance to set your family up, to get your daughter into a better school.

"So I can't say, 'Don't do it,' not when the guy next to you is as big as a house and he's going to take your job and make the money."

(Verducci, Tom. "Totally Juiced". Totally Juiced. Volume 96, Issue 23. 03 June 2002.)

No one can sum up the Steroid Era ballplayer's mindset any better.

In recent years though, Major League Baseball has started to step up it's battle against performance-enhancing drugs. The fear of being caught by this new, tougher system has caused the power numbers in the league to start coming down. But now players are so used to shooting for the homer that they seem to have forgotten the simple ways to play the game. In light of all that, I feel that it is important to review the little things that make this sport one of the greatest I have ever known.

Don't get me wrong: it's incredible to see guys who can hit the ball over the fence. The fans go wild and the batter can take his time going around the bases without the possibility of being thrown out. But when that part of game is over-emphasized, you start trying to hit the ball out every time, and then your ability to even make contact goes south. As much as I despise Barry Bonds, the home run king in the major leagues, he was right when he quoted his father in saying that if you try too hard to even make contact, your shoulder or some other part of your body will start to drift, you'll get under the ball and pop it up to an infielder. The next time, you'll be so mad at yourself for popping it up that you'll try even harder and the same thing will happen. Now, you are 0-for-2, and you've blown most of your at-bats in the game trying to hit the ball.

The same is true of trying to hit home runs. If you try to hit the ball out of the park every time, you'll hit the ball hard, but in most cases you will either pop out or fly out deep to the outfield. Or you will strike out because you will miss the ball all together, as most sluggers do. Just look at the average slugger in the major leagues, and you will see my point. The average slugger today usually has a batting average between 0.250-0.265 (i.e. they are only hitting ball safely around a 25% of the time while the great hitters usually hit safely about 30%), and they usually have between 140-175 strikeouts in a year. In my mind, that is too many strikeouts for a good player to have. Yet most teams make that trade-off of strikeouts for more pop in the lineup. So while the homer is thriller, in the full light of the sport, it is not exactly gold in baseball. In fact, it seems to me to carry a very steep price if you are looking at all-around statistics and performance, like I do when I judge how good a player actually is.

Let me illustrate how 9 sluggers in your regular batting order is not needed to be a very good baseball team. In 1987, the St. Louis Cardinals hit 94 home runs, had a 0.263 team batting average, and stole 248 bases as a team. Their leadoff hitter, Vince Coleman led the stolen base category with 109 steals (astronomical by today's standards, considering the average league stolen base leader today has about 60-65 steals) for a team that otherwise probably would have finished third in their division if they played today. The Cardinals won the National League championship and went on to the World Series where they eventually lost in 7 games. (stats from www.baseball-reference.com) So how did they dominate the other teams in their league? Besides their dominant pitching, they stole bases in the most clutch situations and they were also aggressively running the basepaths. All of this produced a pennant, and probably would have produced a world championship if they hadn't run into the power-hitting buzzsaw called the Minnesota Twins. The Cardinals proved that a team can make it to the World Series not even hitting a home run per game, and therefore the home run is not the most essential piece of offense that will make a team competitive.



Rickey Henderson (above) is the epitome of not needing the homer to score. He was the most coveted player to have on your team, but he was the last person you wanted to face if you were sitting in the other dugout. Basically, he could put his team up 1-0 before the fans had a chance to sit down after the National Anthem. Sure, he could hit the first pitch of the game over the wall (he still holds the record most home runs leading off the game with 81). But it was the little things he did that struck fear into opposing managers and pitchers. He would usually walk, steal second and third base on the next two pitches, and come home when the guy batting behind him hit a sacrifice fly or grounded out. In other words, he could potentially score a run before his team could register their first base hit. He did this so often that his teammates began to affectionately call these type of runs "Rickey Runs". His gimmick was the stolen base, and he did it like no one else ever will. His lifetime total of 1,406 career steals is going to be extremely hard to break, and his single season steal record of 130 thefts will probably never be broken (compare that last number to last season's major league leader, Jacoby Ellsbury, who had 70 swipes). Henderson is yet another snippet of evidence that proves the long ball is not necessary to be competitive in the major leagues.

A third illustration of how small ball works is how the Anaheim Angels play the game (Yes, I refuse to call them the "Los Angeles" Angels of Anaheim, as their official team name is). It may seem like an oxy-moron, but I do admire the way one of my team's toughest rivals play the game. An average Angels team as of the last few years usually contains one or two sluggers who can pummel you for home runs, but most of the lineup are scrappers who manufacture runs by slapping, walking, bunting, and running all over the baseball diamond. The current Twins call most of their hitters "Piranhas" from the way they scrap for runs too, but their mode of operation is stringing hits together instead of manufacturing their runs. Both teams regularly compete for their respective division's championship title. So once again, the home run is not necessary to compete.

But like I also said previously, there's nothing wrong with the home run. Most fans come to see the ball fly out of the ballpark, not to see a bunch of singles. But the home run has it's place, and needs to remain there to retain it's special significance. A balance needs to be struck between long ball and small ball for a team to be affective. That balance used to be the standard in baseball, but the steroid era knocked it out of whack. But baseball's hitters are slowly returning to these techniques that have worked for so many years. By doing this, they just might restore baseball's status as one of America's premier sports (while it will not be able to compete with football, it will definitely get me out to the ballpark more often, and hopefully draw a few extra people as well). But even if baseball still struggles to draw people to the ballpark, if teams follow these fundamentals of baseball, they will see a definite improvement in the win column and also see how much easier it is to play the game. By reestablishing the basic fundamentals, you will rekindle the love for the game that you play and you will also have fun at the same time.

The Art of Switch-Hitting

Whenever I play either baseball or softball, I am one of the privileged few who can hit from both sides of the plate. But when I tell people that I can do it, a lot of them tell me that it's "so cool!", but other in their naivete tell me that I should stick to one side or the other. That, of course, is the wrong thing to say, because there is nothing I love more than a challenge.

When I was younger, I was naturally a right-handed hitter. But then when I was about seven, I insisted that I was a lefty because everybody I knew was a righty and I wanted to be different. So in one such conversation in the front yard, my dad gave up trying to argue and told me that if I wanted to hit left-handed I needed to be on the other side of the plate. I stepped across and the rest is history.

Switch-hitting has been around for more than a hundred years. In 1870, a right-handed hitter named Bob Ferguson of the Brooklyn Atlantics wanted to avoid grounding to the Cincinnati Red Stockings rangy shortstop. So he hit left-handed to try and hit away from him (he singled past the second baseman, driving in the tying run of the game). There have been some famous ballplayers have been switch-hitters. The most famous one was Mickey Mantle, who lit up baseball during the 1950s and 60s. Others include Eddie Murray, Chipper Jones, Mark Teixeira, and Walt Weiss. Some ballplayers like Mike Schmidt, Rickey Henderson, and even the Rangers' current shortstop Michael Young have hit ambidextrous in high school or the minors, but were talked into giving it up to stick with one side. It's not like switch-hitting destroys you as a player.

Besides, it's more fun to hit from both sides. This past season playing softball, I had all sorts of fun with my opponents. I would hit lefty my first at-bat, then for my second time up, I would stand as if I were to hit that way again. Then while every one shifted right, I would walk across the plate, and stand ready to hit right-handed. Then I'd watch their faces when they looked up and find out I switched up on them. It was so hilarious to hear, "Lefty! ... whoops, never mind."

Switch-hitters, in my opinion have an advantage over hitters that hit just one way or the other. If you hit the same hand as the opposing pitcher is throwing, you have to look more over your shoulder to find his release point and the ball. If you hit on the other side, you don't have to crane your neck as much because the pitch is coming from the other side of the plate. So it's easier to hit a righty pitcher left-handed and vice versa. You're still on your own though if you get a pitch in on your hands; it's still tough to fight off. But for this reason, I feel like I'm a step ahead of the pitcher every time I step in the batters box.

In the majors, a switch-hitter also complicates thing when it comes to pitching changes. Here's a hitter that can hit both ways, are you going to bring in the righty reliever or the lefty? It's a complete chess match. Kind of reminds me of an Abbott and Costello routine where Abbott is drilling Costello on coaching. It goes something like this:

Abbott: Come on, Costello, what do do you know about coaching? If I were to put in a left-handed pitcher, what would you do?
Costello: I'd put in a right-handed batter.
Abbott: And if I put in a right-handed pitcher, what would you do?
Costello: I'd put in a left-handed batter.
Abbott: But now I trick you. I take out the right-handed pitcher, and put in a left-handed pitcher.
Costello: Then I double-cross you. I take out my left-handed batter and put in a right-handed batter.
Abbott: Wait a minute, where are you getting all these right-handed batters?
Costello: The same place you're getting all those left-handed pitchers!

If it were me in the middle of that, instead of telling Abbott that I would be double-crossing him with a switch of my own, I would have simply said, "I'm a switch-hitter, what do I care?"

But with every list of pros, comes a list of cons. First off, switch-hitters are usually much better hitters from one hand than they are the other. The aforementioned Great One, Mickey Mantle, always thought that he was a much better hitter right-handed, and a quick look at his stats for either side confirms it, but will also tell you that he had a lot more power hitting left-handed. Another pitfall that you can fall into is feeling much more comfortable from the left-handed side because most of the pitchers are right-handed throwers. This is my usually downfall, because every baseball-savvy person who has seen me hit both ways says I am a much better hitter from the right, my natural side. But to me, because I hit the other way so much, it takes a second or two for me to feel comfortable in the right-handed batter's box.

Downfall #3 is that switch-hitters can get schizophrenic in their swings. According to both the free agent Scott Spiezio (as told to "This Week in Baseball"), and the Chicago White Sox's Nick Swisher (Athletics magazine), the most important thing is to keep both swings the same. In other words, be one hitter, not two. To accomplish this, both swings need a lot more maintenance. This gets me weird looks at times, as I'll be waiting in line somewhere, and to kill time I'll start swinging an imaginary bat. I'm not retarded, I'm just working on my swings, but I'll still get people looking at me like I'm weird.

Besides, which is better: switch-hitting or switch throwing? (or should I have asked which is weirder?) The New York Yankees have a pitcher in their minor league system by the name of Pat Venditte. He wears a custom-made six finger glove (two thumbs), and is a switch-thrower. Things got really interesting when he faced his first switch-hitter. They went back and forth for about a minute, until the umpire finally told Pat to pick a side and pitch from it (Pat eventually struck the hitter out.) So there are switch-throwers out there, in fact I throw pretty well from both sides myself (left-handed has near--but not the quite the same--velocity as right-handed, but is just as accurate).

To me though, it's an advantage to hit both ways. You see the ball much better, and it changes the whole spectrum of the game. People will always tell me to stick to a side, but I'm so used to it and want to be different, that I don't think I'm going to change. Or switch.