I am about to write about a topic that I swore I’d never touch. However, with the recent events of the Hall of Fame elections and the admission of Alex Rodriguez I guess I was naive to think the steroid topic would simply go away. As a player, coach, instructor, and I’d like to think and ambassador for the game of baseball I feel some responsibility to do my part to help clarify some things that have been clearly missed by the media during the steroid era. You can’t turn on Sportscenter anymore without hearing something about steroids in baseball. I hope that the rest of you are as sick of hearing about it as I am. Unfortunately the more the media focuses on it the more it tarnishes this great game and the more valuable lessons are lost.
Let me start by saying that this era has been tragic. I don’t condone or believe in the use of steroids at all. I do believe however that everyone needs to stand up and take accountability for their actions in the steroid era. Too many times the media and the general public crucify the athletes for ducking the tough questions and not telling the whole truth but the problem is far greater. Players, coaches, fans and the commissioner have all had roles in this problem (I find it very interesting that we get all over players for ducking questions but the commissioner the leader isn’t man enough to stand up and take responsibility, he did make more money than most of the players last year) and we all need to admit it and move on.
Probably the biggest tragedy in my mind though is that through all the steroid talk we have been unable to recognize the true genius of some of the greatest players of this era. We point to performance enhancing drugs (whether we can prove it or not) to explain the reasons for great performance. We never take it a step farther and really examine what it was that made these players so great. Its just easier to point to steroids then it is to figure out why these players were better then everyone else. As such we never get to see real progress and we can’t learn from these players and improve our own performance.
This is not meant to be a diatribe on my own personal feelings about steroids or performance enhancing drugs. It is not my intention to contribute to the media circus that the steroid era has become. What I want to do is examine two men. Probably the two most identifiable men with the steroid era but also two of the greatest hitters that ever lived. I am going to tell you why they should be in the Hall of Fame and what I have learned from them. These two men are in large part responsible for how I began to develop my theories and teaching techniques, as such they are partly responsible for the techniques I teach you. What ever your personal feelings are on steroids or these two men I ask that you put those aside and really try to see why it is that they were so great.
Mark McGwire
I don’t think that there is a better example out there as to why sports writers have no business voting for Hall of Fame players. They don’t have the ability to see what I see, they can’t possibly appreciate the true genius of Mark and as such have no business judging him in his career. The first thing that I believe sets Mark apart is his transformation as a hitter throughout his career. If you study swing mechanics and know what you are looking for you can tell that this was a man who desired to get better. What sets Mark apart is that he was a big guy with tremendous success as a younger player and yet still tried to improve. You see, what size does for you is allows you to make more mistakes. There are plenty of big guys in the major leagues that have terrible mechanics but can get away with it due to their abnormal size and strength. As a result they rarely try to change or learn more about hitting. They are happy with where they are and don’t really try for more.
Mark is rare in that if you look at his swing over time you can see vast improvements that to the untrained eye go unnoticed. Sure he was big but he used his body like a little guy. He maximized his power and bat speed through good sound swing mechanics that most big guys don’t do simply because they don’t have to. This to me, puts him right up with Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan because they are examples of athletes who dominated their sports but were still telling themselves that they had to get better. A very rare thing in sports today.
A lot is made about how Mark changed from his rookie year to the year he hit 70 homeruns. What the media doesn’t realize is this is exactly true, what they are missing is where he changed. They like to point to his body and how different it was. But whose isn’t? Listen, I am 31 years old and in the 10 years since my 21st birthday I have put on 30 pounds of lean muscle mass and look very different. Guess what? I am completely clean. Secondly, if you watch me hit today and compare video to 10 years ago the results I produce are not even close to what I was doing as a 21 year old. By media standards I am obviously on the “juice”. If they were educated in swing mechanics they would see a vastly different swing and the reasons why I can now produce the results that I can.
The same is true for Mark. As a rookie Mark hit 49 homeruns and in 1998 he hit 70. If we merely look at the number we immediately say, “WOW that’s a big jump!” and it is a big jump. However, if you really look at it, this is 21 more homeruns as a veteran then as a rookie. There are approximately 24 weeks in a season so really from his rookie year in 1987 to the year he hit 70 in 1998 he was really only hitting less then 1 more homerun a week. When you look at the advancements he made in swing mechanics, mental skills, and knowledge of pitchers this jump isn’t that inconceivable.
Early in his career Mark lifted the ball, he didn’t create lift in the ball. As he matured in the game he became better with his head stability, hip separation, bat path, and generated far more backspin on the ball then he did as a younger player. Early on there wasn’t very much hip separation, the barrel dropped early in the swing, his posture at the point of contact wasn’t near what it was later in his career, and the balls he hit really were high popflys that went far enough to get out of the ballpark. Later in his career however he got great hip separation which generated much more torque and allowed him to take a more direct path to the ball. His head was much more stable which allowed him to rotate faster. His bat path was much more direct which: 1) created much more backspin and carry on the ball and 2) gave him greater room for error. His bat wasn’t leaving the hitting zone as early so he gave himself a better chance of hitting the ball in the strongest position at the point of contact.
This jump in homeruns would be possible just from these mechanical changes alone. But, what we can’t even begin to measure is the power that his mind had over these results. For those of us who remember there were classic shots of Mark in the dugout before every at bat clearing his mind and focusing on the up coming at bat. You could see him controlling his breathing and getting to a place mentally that allowed for mechanical repeatability. This is no different then what I tell my athletes to do. Focus on your breathing, clear mental clutter, to put yourself in position to repeat your mechanics. Remember the athlete who repeats good mechanics the most often will be the most successful. That is exactly what he did. His swing was much more repeatable then it was early on in his career. As a result he was able to square up more balls more often which led to more homeruns.
Barry Bonds
Barry is a little harder to argue for because most people don’t like him as a person. I will go on record however and say that Barry is probably the greatest hitter who ever lived. I know, I know, I am probably offending a lot of people out there but you name another player (other than Babe Ruth) more feared then Barry. Name me another player who was intentionally walked with the bases loaded more times then Barry. Name me another player who, when he hit a single you were disappointed. Wether you like him or not he has to at the very least be in the conversation as the greatest hitter who ever lived.
Barry’s genius lied in two areas: 1) he possessed all the same mechanics that I discussed with Mark but his repeatability was unbelievable 2) his approach at the plate is legendary. I have never seen a player with more discipline and more of an ability to wait for the pitcher’s mistake and capitalize on it then Barry Bonds.
Mechanically Barry got more hip separation then any player I’ve ever seen. He generated so much torque in the core of his body that his hands were lightning fast. In addition his bat path was more direct and the backspin he generated was better then any player in baseball. Barry was able to accelerate the bat head better because of his greater hip separation and the fact that his barrel stayed above the ball so long he didn’t waste any energy trying to “pull” the bat through the zone. His head stability and his posture at the point of contact were amazing as well.
Barry’s repeatability though was what amazed me more than anything. I have always said that there are many factors that can lead to mechanical breakdown. From fatigue, to mental clutter, to too much effort (muscle tension) there are many things that will not allow the body to perform good mechanics. For Barry to remain that focused, that clear in his mind after not seeing a good pitch to hit all game and then putting a perfectly mechanically sound swing on the only good pitch he sees was incredible.
The flight of his ball was amazing as well. The backspin he generated and the carry he got as a result definitely separated him from any other hitter. It is almost immeasurable as to how much more distance he created by the amount of backspin he got. Just like with Mark the media loves to point to how much Barry’s body changed over time. This is much more apparent with Barry then it is with Mark however his swing changed as well. His mechanical improvement over time really paved the way for him to produce the results he did.
As I began to study these hitters I was able to use my educational background and understanding of how the body works to see what separated them from other hitters. Their mechanics and this knowledge became the foundation for the mechanics I teach today. I would watch them hit and if I think I saw something I would go try it. Over time I began to notice that I was producing similar results to these two players. My bat speed increase tremendously, I began to generate backspin and as a result (even though I am 5’8” and 185 lbs.) I began to hit the ball with similar carry and distance. The more I worked with these mechanics and refined these skills I began to realize that great performance isn’t about “natural talent” or performance enhancing drugs but was completely about physical mechanics and the power of the human mind. If we simply dismiss everything as “chemically induced” we then miss the opportunity to increase our own performance. We inadvertently put limits on what it is we can accomplish because we don’t allow ourselves the opportunity to learn from these players.
I hope that you have had the opportunity to see that these players were ahead of their time in much more then simply the results on the field. I think that they both can teach us a lot about how to maximize our performance as hitters if we look past the accusations and media hype and look at the mechanics behind what made them successful. I can’t wait for the day when these two hitters are appreciated for what they really were, two of the greatest hitters ever. I know that I personally miss watching them play.
