re: Spin-off- Favorite all time batting stance

"They used to say Rod Carew had a different stance for every pitcher. That wasn't really true, but he did have different stances. Sometimes he'd crowd the plate, daring pitchers to come inside. Sometimes he'd crouch down lower, especially against power pitchers, shrinking the size of the strike zone. He could hit in all of them, winning seven batting titles, including a .388 mark in 1977, and hitting .300 every season from 1969 to 1983.

If you're too young to remember Carew, he was beautiful to watch, the ultimate finesse player, owning the batter's box like he was conducting the orchestra. The best active comparison would be Ichiro Suzuki, although Carew walked a lot more and was a much better hitter compared to the league averages over their careers; Ichiro's best single-season OPS+ was 130 in 2004; Carew's career mark was 131. That's how good he was at manipulating the baseball: Better over 19 seasons than Ichiro at his peak.

Fred Lynn explained one reason for Carew's success was his ability to bunt. "First, he bunts better than anyone else, even with two strikes," Lynn told Thomas Boswell in 1983. "That distorts the whole infield and creates wider angles for him to hit the ball through. It's like he's always hitting with the infield pulled in. His bunting creates holes."

Carew once said that he'd laugh when he saw an infielder moving two steps to his left. That meant he'd just hit the ball two steps to the infielder's right..."

One of the weirdest is Kevin Youkilis and the insane thing he'd do where his left hand was a third of the way up the bat and then he'd slide it down as the pitch was dealt.

quote:

---

For all of you young travel ball veterans:

You missed out on a lot of fun doing those practice every day of the year teams. Winning my Pony League's championship the summer after my freshman year was nowhere near as much fun as an average day when we were playing at our neighborhood's vacant lot. The man that owned it kept it mowed all summer when his son was a kid. He continued to mow it for us kids that came after his son was grown. If one of us got hurt, nobody's parents thought about suing him. We didn't have real bases. Seem to remember having plywood squares at first and home plate, but sometimes we'd use a paper bag with a few rocks on it at second and third. If one of use got a big splinter from a piece of plywood, nobody got sued.

By the 5th or 6th grade, we used the fields we played Little League thru American Legion on. They were vacant for pick-up games all day every summer. Sometimes we'd ride our bikes across town and play our neighborhood against those snotty nosed Eastside kids. People didn't sue cities if their unsupervised kids got hurt playing on their field.

---

quote:

---

Every bland white kid in 80s/90s little league loved Ryne Sandberg and I still don't know why.

---

WGN was in everyone's house is why.

And I know WTBS was also, but nobody wanted to emulate Dale Murphy because he looked like John Boy Walton and had that mole.

Darryl Strawberry and Christian Yelich. Love those long, fluid lefties who can mash to all fields

quote:

---

Eric Davis had a bizarre one. He stood there like he didn't give a sh*t with his body limp and the bat half cocked parallel to his waist. But when the pitch arrived he sprung into action.

---

I grew up thinking that Eric Davis could have been the greatest player in baseball history if he ever got ready for a pitch.