Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Swinging telephone poles

The biggest difference I noticed was the approach of the batters. They were all over the place in the box before the pitch. Hitters today tend to be very still. They have their wiggles and timing devices, but for the most part, once the ball is coming, the best hitters waste little motion. They shift their weight, rotate their hips and -- wham! -- whip the bat through the strike zone.

So it was startling for me to watch Yogi Berra literally walk around in the batter's box as the pitch was on its way. He'd sometimes take a little stutter-step backwards, away from the plate, with each foot as he loaded up his swing. Almost every hitter practically wound up before getting his bat moving forward.

Those bats were enormous pieces of lumber compared to what players swing today. They had to load up.

Watching these Yankees and Dodgers struggle to get those logs through the strike zone, I wondered why it took so long -- until the '80s and '90s -- for the baseball world to figure out that lighter bats are more effective. Didn't they have physics teachers back then? Couldn't somebody have convinced someone like Billy Martin that the bat speed he'd gain with a lighter bat would make up for the mass he'd lose?

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