The Way of Baseball

by Shawn Green

  Some people do this instinctively.

  I had to learn it.

  Every day of that ’98 season, I hit batting practice against our bench coach, Jim Lett. He was in great shape and took pride in throwing every pitch over the plate for fifteen minutes of rapid fire, allowing the batter no time to think. The only way I could hit at his pace was to focus all of my attention, leaving no room for any sense of myself; fortunately, my no-mind tee work complemented his style of throwing. Sometimes, we’d get into rhythms where he would throw every pitch right where I wanted it, and I would launch every pitch deep into the seats. We became locked into the action of batting practice and lost our individual senses of self. He wasn’t throwing and I wasn’t hitting, we both became the movement, just as dancers moving in sync become the dance rather than individuals dancing.

  And then there was Tony Fernandez …

  I was fortunate in batting practice to have been placed in a group that included Tony, whose awareness of his swing was as developed as anyone I ever saw. He was a wise, true master of hitting, and so I affectionately nicknamed him Yoda, though judging from his response I don’t think he was much of a Star Wars fan. Every day in BP, Tony would join Carlos Delgado, Darrin Fletcher, and me for our fifteen minutes of work. Carlos always went first and was charged with watching the clock to make sure we all got the same number of swings. I followed Carlos, since he and I were going at it in our daily home run derby. Fletch went next, hooking balls down the right field line when he wasn’t busy stirring the good-natured competition between Carlos and me. Tony Fernandez batted last. Patient and self-contained, Tony often seemed oblivious to whatever shenanigans were going on around him. He’d step into the cage and take his swings with complete attention on what he was doing. Tony didn’t always use all his allotted time because he paid attention only to one thing—he’d hit until he felt his legs driving his swing in such a way that his bat came through the zone as if it were swinging itself. Some days, he’d walk into the cage and take only half of his swings and then stop because he’d found the feel he was looking for. Once in a while, he’d walk into the cage, take one perfect swing, and walk out. Without a word, he’d put away his bat and head directly into the clubhouse. Fletch, Carlos, and I loved when he did that because it meant we’d get extra swings. Soon, we encouraged him after every swing. “Beautiful swing, Tony … Your legs look perfect … Go ahead and take it on in to the clubhouse … What a great one to end on!” When he was in a playful mood, we’d catch a grin on the master’s face. Other times, when he couldn’t find his legs, he’d silence us with a glare. What a lesson Tony provided us, working with such awareness of his body and swing that he always knew exactly what he needed, nothing more and nothing less. One perfect swing was more valuable to him than eight or ten mediocre swings. He was all about quality and could care less about quantity.

  Another lesson I learned from Tony was the importance of remaining calm, self-disciplined, and committed to one’s own work standards even in the midst of a batting slump. For example, whenever Tony lost his feel for a few games, he’d bust out his long, heavy bats. Most guys grab a lighter bat when they’re slumping to try and increase bat speed. Not Yoda. “When I use a bigger bat, it forces me to use my legs and body perfectly or else I won’t be able to get it around,” he explained. Tony wasn’t one to put Band-Aids on his swing just to scratch out an extra hit or two when he was struggling; rather, he remained always committed to finding his true swing. If that meant going hitless for a game or two by swinging the heavier bat, he was willing. Tony knew his swing and he knew himself, and I was fortunate to have had a teammate whose approach to the game offered such lessons. His mere presence had a profound impact on my personal success.

  By midseason ’98, my connection to the pitcher began to make its way beyond BP and into actual games. I was no longer battling against a pitcher who was trying to get me out. I’d step into the box and, through my rhythmic routines, become aware of my body. Released of the mind’s interference, my awareness (as unselfconscious as a predator striking its prey) was now free to connect to the pitcher. By the time the ball left his hand, I was fully alert in the moment, so that the pitcher was now my partner in hitting rather than my opponent. Since there was no identifying with myself, what was left? Nothing, no one, only a single action, hitting. During my increasingly frequent hot streaks, I became the act of hitting rather than a person who was hitting. In the absence of any weighty sense of self, I’d step into the batter’s box much lighter. Sometimes, I’d step out between pitches to revisit my mind. “Check the signs. What’s the count? What’s the game situation?” But as soon as my spikes returned to their toeholds, my mind would dissipate. My body would move through its routine, extending my awareness out to the pitcher. I’d feel my fingers wiggling around the bat handle and my body subtly rocking, but I’d be completely out there, at once anchored to my body and locked on the pitcher.

  It was a whole new ballgame.

  With this new acuity, I began to notice that many pitchers tipped their pitches. Much like experienced poker players who discern their opponents’ bluffing by reading subtle gestures or changes in posture or facial expression, I began to note pitchers’ tiny glove movements and differences in their deliveries to anticipate what they were going to throw. I’d been exposed to tipping as early as my days with Cito, but I’d been too lost in thought and analysis in those days to prosper from it. I’d step up to the plate with my analytical mind on overload; if I knew the pitcher was going to throw a fastball, I’d likely swing at it even if it was over my head or in the dirt. Entering the batter’s box in a state of no-mind was a whole different story. I couldn’t help but benefit from all the wonderful tells that pitchers provided me.

  It’s amazing what we notice when we actually watch with full awareness.

  Now, when I knew what kind of pitch was coming, I no longer needed to swing at every fastball or alter my stride to hit an off-speed pitch. If I knew a changeup was coming, I didn’t think about it—I simply watched for a slower pitch in a specific location. If the ball was in that location, the swing happened on its own. I wasn’t thinking, just watching. Over the remaining ten years of my career, close to half of the pitchers I faced (including more than a few Hall of Famers) gave away their pitches.

  One might think Major League pitchers should know better than to tip their pitches. After all, they’re the best of the best. But Major League pitchers are actually more likely to tip than even high-school pitchers or Little Leaguers. This is because less experienced pitchers aren’t likely to have thrown enough pitches to have ingrained consistent mechanics, whereas major leaguers throw thousands of pitches each year in the bullpen to recreate the same deliveries over and over. Every fastball they throw should be a mirror image of the previous fastball, every changeup a mirror image of the previous changeup, and so on. The more precise they can become with their motions, the more precise they will be with their pitch locations. Thus, as they do their work in the bullpen they reinforce the same movements. Unless a pitcher is aware that he tips and is trying to fix the problem, he gives little thought to the subtleties of his delivery. But I was paying attention to the subtleties.

  The most common way pitchers tip is with their gloves. Different pitches are held differently in the throwing hand. A fastball is gripped with the index and middle finger on top of the ball, whereas a changeup is gripped more with the palm. Thus, the hand holding a changeup often makes for a wider hand in the glove. As a hitter, I’d observe from sixty feet away the glove get bigger, or flare, by just an inch or so with this widened changeup grip. The movement didn’t have to be drastic for me to pick it up and know what was coming.

  One of the many pitchers who tipped in this way was the Minnesota Twins’ Brad Radke, who was known for his top-notch changeup. My teammate Carlos Delgado, also adept at picking up these nuances, told me early in the year, “Watch his glove. He flares it on a changeup.” I took note of this in a journal (th
ere are too many games and too many pitchers to keep track of via memory). The next time I faced Radke, I saw his glove flare just after he nodded to the catcher’s sign. He threw me a good changeup exactly where he wanted it, down in the strike zone—the pitch would have been tough for me to hit well if I hadn’t known it was coming. As it was, I hit it for a home run off the clock in right-centerfield, just below the upper deck at the Metrodome.

  Kevin Appier was a pitcher I’d never hit well until I discerned his tip. His approach was to get a hitter thinking inside fastball to speed up the hitter’s bat, which subsequently made it almost impossible to lay off the next pitch, a slider or forkball that would break, unhittable, into the dirt. After I noticed that his glove popped open for a fleeting instant in the middle of his windup on both the slider and the forkball, while it remained skinny on his fastball, he became much easier to face. Skinny glove equals inside fastball. Glove popped open equals something else. The tip happened so fast and came so late in his delivery (not uncommon among the pitchers who tipped) that any distraction of thought would have paralyzed me as a hitter; there was no place in my awareness for my mind if I was going to see and respond to such subtle glove differences.

  I faced Randy Johnson often. At first, his tip was easy to discern because, much like Radke, his glove flared before he began his windup. When Johnson, one of the top left-handed pitchers of all time, threw me his nastiest slider just off the outside corner and I didn’t even flinch, let alone swing at it, he knew I had his pitches. He adjusted, and soon he no longer flared his glove on the slider while taking the signs. However, his habit was so engrained that as he turned sideways in the middle of his windup his glove would still pop open if he changed from his fastball grip. In one game, he grew so paranoid about us having his pitches that he altered his whole delivery by hiding his hand behind his back rather than keeping it in his glove as he normally did. I enjoyed seeing such an intimidating figure completely lost in his head. I hit nearly .300 against him with a couple of home runs, not bad considering that most lefties seemed to always come up hurt prior to games he was pitching. Nonetheless, he was so good that he still got me out 70 percent of the time even though I knew which pitch was coming! Without his tipping, I’d have had no chance.

  Randy’s lesser-known teammate, Armando Reynoso, exhibited a different but equally common manner of tipping his pitches. He didn’t throw very hard, especially late in his career, so his bag of tricks relied on fooling the hitter. Thus, whenever he threw his changeup or curveball, his windup and delivery would be faster than when he threw his fastball, when his delivery noticeably slowed. Subconsciously, he’d try to sell the hitter that a fastball was coming by speeding up his delivery whenever he threw his changeup; conversely, he’d slow down his delivery whenever the fastball was coming in hopes of slowing the hitter. From the stretch, the difference was that the glove came set much faster on the changeup and slower on the fastball. One game, with runners on first and second, he came set with a medium tempo, leaving me uncertain as to what he was throwing. I called timeout. (I’d only ever call timeout on two occasions: one, if the pitcher was messing with a base-stealing teammate by holding the ball for a long time; two, if a tipper left me unsure as to what he was going to throw, whereupon I’d step out of the box to make him retip his pitch.) This time, Reynoso came set with his faster glove movements. My eyes popped open, even though my stare was already at full intensity. He floated a slow changeup right down the middle and I launched it deep into the seats for a three-run home run.

  When it came to John Smoltz and Curt Schilling, as with Appier, only a handful of hitters in the league picked up the subtle tips of their pitches. Both guys threw hard, straight fastballs known as four-seamers, occasional cutters (fast-balls that cut inside to a left-handed hitter), curveballs, and hard forkballs. They both threw fastballs at over ninety-three miles per hour, while their ninety miles per hour forkballs dropped into the dirt at the last second. When the ball came out of their hands, it was next to impossible to differentiate between fastballs and forkballs, which is what made them so effective.

  Fortunately for me, I often knew before they released the ball whether a fastball or forkball was coming.

  Schilling’s glove started the same every time out of the windup, but when his glove went over his head, the fingers rounded on the forkball, and remained flatter on the fastball. From the stretch, it was more difficult to catch and I sometimes got crossed up because the differences were so subtle. Other times, I swung and missed even though I knew what was coming because Schilling had such good movement on his pitches. Meantime, John Smoltz, also a top pitcher of his era, tipped his pitches in a similar but slightly different manner. Before he started his windup, his glove was slightly flared on the forkball. It was so slight, however, that I was rarely completely sure. Fortunately, in the middle of his windup, the angle of his glove was horizontal on the forkball and diagonal on the fastball. Like Appier, this action was fleeting, and occurred so near his release that it was impossible for me to utilize unless I was devoid of all thought.

  Among all the pitchers who tipped, Greg Maddux was my favorite to hit against. He was viewed as a professor of the art of baseball because he was such an intelligent pitcher. Somehow, he could always tell when a left-handed hitter was anticipating his trademarked, moving fastball, which started straight for the hitter’s hip and then, at the last moment, ran back over the inside corner of the plate for a strike. So, instead of the fastball, he’d throw a nasty changeup. Meantime, he’d mix in cutters and curveballs, all to disrupt the hitter’s timing. He knew that most hitters geared up their swings to unload on the ball when they got ahead of him in the count, so he’d defy their expectation by taking more off his fastball instead of throwing it harder. He didn’t need to try hard to get hitters out, but let the hitters get themselves out.

  I enjoyed facing Maddux because I felt he approached pitching in a similar manner to which I approached hitting. (Additionally, it’s always fun facing one of the best.) It wasn’t until a few years after I first faced him in ’97 that I discovered he was tipping his pitches. The master was actually tipping! My teammates said, “No way, Maddux doesn’t tip.” But he did. Not only was I excited as a batter to have his pitches, but I felt as if I had won an unspoken chess match against Bobby Fischer. From the windup, when he stepped back to begin his motion and the glove went over his head, I noticed that I could see an inch of the palm of his throwing hand peeking out of the heel of his glove when he threw his faster pitches: the fastball and the cutter. When he was throwing his soft pitches—changeups and curveballs—I could barely see any of his throwing hand. As a hitter, I was more concerned with knowing hard or soft rather than whether a pitch was going to curve. I knew that if I could be on time for the pitch, then I could adjust to the movement of the ball.

  I only had Maddux’s pitches out of the windup. In a perfect world, I’d have had him in the stretch too because that would have meant there’d be base runners to drive home. Maddux was so good, though, it was rare for hitters to reach base anyway. Thus, he was in the windup more often than most other pitchers. And my at-bats against him when he was in the windup worked to set up the way he pitched me with guys on base. For example, if he threw me an inside fastball out of the windup that I laced into the right field corner for a double (in part because I knew what was coming), my next at-bat with a runner on base he’d likely to try to get me out with off-speed pitches. He still might show me fastballs inside off the plate, but he would shift his plan to off-speed pitches, playing into my hand.

  Eventually, I became so adept at picking up tips, even from unknown pitchers, that I’d sometimes flash Carlos a quick sign as to what the pitcher was doing between pitches of my at bats. If a guy flared his glove on the changeup, I’d make eye contact with Carlos when I stepped out of the box and then subtly spread my fingers while holding my bat.

  In a game against the Braves’ left-handed rookie Bruce Chen, whom I’d never
faced before, we were down four runs with the bases loaded when I noticed that his delivery was faster on his off-speed pitches and slower on his fastball. Next pitch, I hit a grand slam. As I touched home plate and high-fived Delgado, who’d approached from the on-deck circle, I mouthed to him, “Fast-slow, slow-fast.” That was all he needed to know and he followed my grand slam with a homer of his own. As great as it had felt to round the bases with a game-tying grand slam—the crack of the bat, the roar of a big crowd, the arc of the ball, the circling of the bases, three teammates waiting with high-fives at home plate—it felt just as good to have deciphered the secrets of a new pitcher in real time and to have passed along that information, leading to Carlos’ go-ahead home run.

  And then there’s Mariano Rivera … He never tips, though hitters know what’s coming from him 95 percent of the time. No matter, I still couldn’t hit him. He had such a devastating cutter that it didn’t matter if hitters (especially lefties) knew it was coming. Pitch after pitch, he threw ninety-five plus miles per hour fastballs that seemed to jump up and in to lefties at the last possible moment. As the ball came out of his hand, it would look to be a strike on the inside part of the plate, but when I’d swing, the ball would be in at my knuckles. That’s why lefty after lefty wound up running down the line with the handle of his bat in his hand, grounding out to the right side of the infield. Rivera was so good that I never brought a good bat up to the plate with me when I faced him because I didn’t want to destroy a favorite piece of lumber.

  In the late innings of an early season game in the Bronx against Rivera, I told my teammate Pat Hentgen that I was going to take every pitch. “It always looks like a strike out of his hand but then ends up inside,” I said. “I’ll just refuse to swing.”