CHAPTER XI

Cobb is game’s greatest natural hitter—Is master of style—A few Cobb yarns—Swing hitters and choke hitters—Importance and weakness of each style—Gehrig’s hitting style—What makes him great—Willie Keeler’s motto—The value of waiting—Correcting batting faults.

The greatest natural hitter I ever saw is Ty Cobb.

There may be fellows who can hit the ball further, and there are other chaps perhaps who may excel him in some particular department of hitting. But for all around class up there at the plate Cobb stands alone.

I never saw Hans Wagner nor Napoleon Lajoie or the other old-timers who loomed great as hitters. Perhaps they were as good as Ty. Some fellows claim they were. But personally I don’t believe it. I don’t believe there ever was another one like Cobb, or ever will be.

To young fellows, anxious to learn how to hit, the best advice I can give is simply this: “Watch Cobb. Study his stance, his swing, his timing and his follow-through. Imitate him. Copy his manner. He comes as near being perfection as any batter in the world.”

Ty and I have had our little battles. There have been times when only the interference of other players kept us from coming to blows. Once in Detroit, a couple of years ago, we were prime movers in a playing-field row that lead to a near-riot and resulted in a ball game being called in the eighth inning because the police couldn’t clear the crowd from the field.

We were rivals and playing-field enemies even in my pitching days. And I pick Cobb as the greatest natural hitter I ever saw, despite the fact that personally I found him easy to pitch to. A pitcher, over the course of his career, runs across certain players who are easy victims, and others who hit everything he offers regardless. Despite the fact that Cobb was and is a great hitter, I always found him easy to pitch to. I can name a dozen men in the league who gave me a lot more trouble than Ty up there at the bat. Joe Jackson was one. Sam Rice was another. Eddie Collins was still another. But despite that I still consider Cobb the king of them all when it comes to hitters.

I’m paid to hit home runs. In a way that’s a handicap. To hit home runs I’ve got to swing from my heels with all the power in my body. Which isn’t good batting style. And the greatest tribute I can pay to Ty Cobb is simply this. If I wasn’t expected to drive the ball out of the lot every time I come up there to the plate I’d change my batting form tomorrow. I’d copy Cobb’s style in every single thing he does. And I’ll wager right now that if I could do that I’d increase my batting average 100 points over the season.

Every man in the big leagues has his own individual batting style. But in a general way you can classify batters into two divisions. One is the “swing hitters.” Those are the fellows who grasp their bats at the end, take a toe hold at the plate and take a full swing at the ball with all the power they can muster. They’re the chaps who bust the fences and send the outfielders back to the wall. They’re the fellows who do most of the striking out too.

The other division is the “choke hitters.” These are the men we call “smart hitters.” They choke their bats, stand flatfooted and take a half swing. They poke the ball, rather than hit it—and while they don’t get as much distance as the swing hitters, they are much harder to fool. The choke hitter may not hit many home runs, but he doesn’t strike out much either.

When I broke in to the league “choke hitters” were in the majority. Cobb was in his prime then. So was Collins. New players copied their batting styles as much as possible. Then, too, pitchers in those days were permitted to doctor the ball and use all sorts of freak stuff. A fellow had to choke his bat, take a short swing and be prepared for anything, or else he “whiffed.” In these days “choke hitters” are giving way to “swing hitters.” Change in pitching rules, coupled with the fans’ demands for long and heavy hitting has brought about the change.

Some folks say I was responsible for the development of “swing hitting.” Maybe they’re right. The minute I started hitting home runs with any frequency the newspapers took it up. The fans liked to see the ball go sailing out of the park. After the old time pitching battle, hitting of that sort was something of a novelty and a relief. Other fellows, particularly the big, burly, powerful chaps, began taking their bat at the end and “swinging from the heels” as the boys say. And “swing hitting” came into prominence.

Understand I’m not saying ♦that “swing hitting” is a good thing. I don’t think it is. The average kid or man, trying to improve his hitting, will do well to forget home runs and adopt the “choke style.” But just the same swing hitting is quite the rage in the major leagues today.

♦ “hat” replaced with “that”

Among the fellows who are “swing hitters” will be found most of the sluggers. I’m a swing hitter. So is Lou Gehrig. So are Harry Heilmann, Goose Goslin, Pie Traynor, Bill Terry, Cy Williams, Tony Lazzeri, Bob Fothergill, Bob Meusel, Rogers Hornsby, and a score of other long distance sluggers whom I might mention.

Not all of us have the same style however.

When Lou Gehrig and I were in the midst of our race for home run honors I had a lot of people ask me which of us hit the ball the harder. I don’t imagine there’s a lot of difference in the force with which we hit the ball. The point is that we hit differently.

We’re both “swing hitters” but there the resemblance ends. I use a golfing swing—loose and easy with a slight upward motion. Lou hits stiff-armed. Lou stands with his feet farther apart, and takes a comparatively short stride with his swing. I stand with my feet fairly close together, the right foot a little further in than the left, and take a long stride with the swing. Lou hits with his shoulders. I hit with my entire body coming around on the swing. Naturally, with my whole body on a pivot I get a longer follow-through than does Lou, whose follow-through is limited by the reach of his rigid arms.

Swinging stiff-arm, too, Lou usually hits a ball on a line. The hardest balls he hits are those which travel say twenty or twenty-five feet above the ground and on a line to the outfield. Any time he lifts a ball into the air (a fly ball) he loses some of the power. The balls I hit most squarely and with most power are apt to go high into the air. My home runs, for the most part, are usually high flies that simply carry out of the park. That’s because I take a loose swing with a slight upward angle.

Incidentally that ability to hit a high, hard fly has earned me a lot of home runs in my career. Particularly in Washington and Cleveland where the right field wall is fairly short but marked by a fence that’s perhaps sixty feet high. When I hit a ball hard it clears the fence. When Lou really smacks one, the ball takes such a low tangent that it usually bounces back off the fence and is held to a single or a double. Yet he may have hit the ball every bit as hard and as squarely as I did.

You can prove that by the records. Look up Lou’s record and you’ll see that he has had very few home runs in either Cleveland or Washington. It isn’t that he doesn’t hit in those parks. Simply that he’s what we call a “line hitter,” and a good high fence is tough for him.

Harry Heilmann has a stiff arm swing much like Gehrig’s, while Goose Goslin takes a long free swing with plenty of follow-through like mine. Harry, though a right hand hitter, hits to right field a lot. That’s because he swings “late.” And by swinging late he overcomes, in a great measure, the handicap of being a “swing hitter.” Harry is harder to fool than the average “swing hitter.” Simply because he swings late, he’s not so much a “goat” for change of pace stuff.

The “choke hitters” include such men as Cobb, Joe Sewell, Muddy Ruel, Joe Dugan, Earl Combs, Mark Koenig, the Waner boys, Paul and Lloyd, and Sam Rice of the Washington Senators. Mighty cagey boys they are too—striking out seldom and usually rating right up to the top in the matter of total base hits for the season.

Men like Joey Sewell and Earl Combs rate among the best stickmen in the business. Combs doesn’t get a lot of credit for his hitting—perhaps because he happened to be on the same club with Gehrig and myself, who get drives so much longer. But he’s one of the best hitters in the game just the same. And one of the most dangerous men in a pinch, that a pitcher is ever called upon to face.

Like Heilmann, Combs is a “late” swinger—and being a left handed hitter, he usually hits to left field or center. Combs is smart, however, and can “cross up” a pitcher by some pretty nifty place hitting. And the ability to place hits is the real mark of batting prowess. Willie Keeler, one of the greatest and most scientific little hitters who ever lived put his finger on the whole thing one day when someone asked him the secret of hitting:

“Hit ’em where they ain’t,” Willie replied.

That sounds simple enough but it isn’t so easy. To understand what is meant by place hitting you must understand first that pitchers are always striving to make a man hit in a certain direction. The place hitter is the chap who can take a ball which, ordinarily he would hit to right, and hit it to left, or vice versa.

The greatest example of place hitting I ever saw was put on by Ty Cobb one afternoon at the Yankee Stadium a couple of seasons ago. Ty was taking batting practice and some of the boys on our bench were kidding him.

Shocker, in particular, was “on” him.

“Hey, Ty” Shock yelled. “You’re supposed to be good. Let’s see you hit one down the right field foul line.”

Ty took a half swing and planted the ball within three feet of the spot Shocker called for.

“Now hit one to left,” Shocker commanded.

Ty socked one a mile a minute over third base.

“Center field, now,” Shocker ordered.

Ty dropped the ball over second base.

“Well, I’m a son-of-gun!” Shocker exploded. “Let’s see you foul one back of the catcher.”

Ty did it, too.

“You win,” Shocker said, “I’m whipped.”

Ty grinned. “That’s nothing,” he shouted to the Yankee bench “you think you’re quite a guy—suppose you catch this one.” And Ty drove a foul right into our dugout, so close that Shocker could almost have reached out and caught the ball.

That’s real place hitting. But it was no accident. A lot of times, when the boys got on him a bit during batting practice, I’ve seen Ty stand up there at the plate and drive a ball right into the dugout sending all the fellows scurrying for cover.

Of course, hitting like that in batting practice, and doing it in a game are two different things. Just the same Mr. Cobb comes about as near being the perfect place hitter as anyone we have sticking around the league today.

Eddie Collins is another chap who hits where he wants to hit, rather than in the direction the pitcher wants him to. One of the pet hitting stunts of these two is to fake a swing and find out whether the second baseman or shortstop is going to cover. Then, when they’ve found out, they lay one down right through the position that’s vacated as the man goes over to cover second. That’s putting on the hit and run with a vengeance.

Personally I’m not a place hitter. No “swing hitters” are. I’m big and strong and get a lot of drive back of the ball. Everyone knows that nine times out of ten I’ll hit to right field. But if I really get hold of one it doesn’t make any difference whether the fielders know where it’s coming or not. It just goes out of the park.

Just the same, I like to try a bit of place hitting once in a while and in the past two or three seasons I’ve got so I can hit to left pretty well by choking my bat and taking an extra step forward with my swing. Naturally when I choke my bat the opposing fielders can see what I’m going to do—but I get away from that by not choking until the minute I start my swing. Then they don’t have time to come over for me.

I don’t believe it’s possible to make a hitter.

A fellow either can hit the ball, or he can’t—and that’s that. But it is possible for a natural hitter to improve, and it’s possible to overcome a hitting weakness.

The batting eye, and the sense of timing are born in a man. If he hasn’t got them, there’s no way of giving them to him. But mechanical things can be overcome by practice. The swing, the stance, the stride—these are things that can be changed and improved.

Every batter who comes into the big leagues has his “groove.” That’s the place where he likes a ball best. With some fellows the “groove” is a ball through the middle. With others it may be a high ball outside, or a low ball inside, or vice versa. Given a pitch in that particular spot he can whale the tar out of it.

By the same argument every player has a hitting weakness. Perhaps it’s a curve ball. Perhaps it’s a change of pace. Perhaps it’s a low one inside. The pitcher is trying constantly to pitch to that weakness and keep away from the “groove.” The hitter, of course, is trying to hide his weakness and get the pitcher to pitch to his strength.

A hitting weakness is one thing that can be overcome by constant practice and hard work. When I first broke into the game I had a tough time hitting change of pace pitching—particularly the real slow stuff. I swung too fast, and either fouled the ball off into the stands or missed it entirely. Today I believe I can hit the slow stuff about as well as any “swing hitter” in the business. And all because I worked hard at it. I used to go up to the batting cage during spring practice and have the pitchers give me slow ball after slow ball. I’d swing and swing until I was arm-sore. But I got my timing down so I could hit the slow ones—and that was the thing I was after.

Another thing that used to bother me was over-anxiety to hit. Most fellows suffer from that at one time or another. You’re so anxious to hit that you swing at bad balls. The toughest thing anybody has to learn is to keep that old bat on the shoulder on the “close ones.” The smart pitcher is always working the comers, keeping the ball just an inch or two outside or inside, a mite too high or a bit too low. The over-anxious hitter is duck-soup for that sort of pitching.

Most fellows go up there to the plate with the wrong idea. They see a ball coming up on the corner and they think to themselves: “This one looks pretty good. I’d better swing at it or maybe the umpire will call it a strike, anyhow.”

What they ought to think is:

“That one’s not good enough. If I let it go chances are it will be called a ball.”

You may get crossed up and have a strike called now and then, but you’d be surprised how often it really is a ball. And once a pitcher sees that you’re not to be fooled on those “almost strikes” he’ll come in there with it and give you something a little ♦better to hit at.

♦ “beter” replaced with “better”

I learned my lesson in that 1923 world series. I’ve already told you about it. It was plain over-anxiety to hit that made me swing at a ball in the ground for that third strike that Ryan threw. Since then I’ve been a little more careful.

Of course there’s danger the other way too. As Umpire Bill Byron used to say, “You can’t get a hit with the bat on your shoulder.” That’s true enough. But neither can you get a hit if you keep swinging at bad balls all the time.

As I started out to say, it’s possible for a fellow to improve his hitting, and correct his hitting weaknesses. The answer is practice, hard work, and confidence. When Lou Gehrig first came into the league he couldn’t hit a low ball inside. Lou did two things. First he changed his stride. He had been stepping well into the ball. Now he stepped just a little straighter. Then he practiced, and practiced. Today not many pitchers have the nerve to pitch ’em low and inside to Lou anymore. He has overcome his weakness.

Rogers Hornsby, one of the greatest right hand hitters the game has ever known, is another chap who had to work hard when he came into the league. Strange as it may seem Rog was no bargain with the stick when he first came into the league. But he had the natural hitting eye, and Miller Huggins, who was then manager of the Cardinals, set him to work. First off he changed his stance, took a little of the stiffness out of his legs and taught him to stride with the swing. Then he got him to loosen his shoulders a bit—and the first thing anyone knew Roger was tearing the hands off infielders who got in front of his drives.

I guess there’s no better curve ball hitter in the big leagues today than Joe Harris, who starred with Washington and later with Pirates. Joe socks that old curve ball for sleeper jumps right regularly. Yet when he came into the league Joe couldn’t hit a curve ball. He simply studied the thing out, discovered what was wrong and corrected it. It takes a long time, sometimes, but it can be done.

Nobody can put down a set of rules for correcting batting.

In the first place no two men hit alike. When I was a kid in Baltimore, playing on a kid team, we had a young fellow on our club who thought he knew a lot about baseball. He started out to make us all into hitters, and his theory was that the most important thing was swinging on a straight line. So he took two boards and nailed them on a post, leaving just space enough between them for a bat to pass easily. Then for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time we’d stand up there and swing at that opening, the idea being to develop a swing that would keep the bat moving in a straight line. It sounded fine but it didn’t work out. The first thing we knew we were all swinging perfectly stiff. If a ball happened to come through the middle of the plate, waist high, we would murder it. But if it was high or low we were sunk.

Here are some general rules that might be worth following:

If your weakness is a fast ball, don’t hold your bat quite so far back on your shoulder. Shorten your back swing and shorten your stride. In other words speed up a little.

If your weakness is a curve ball, change your stride to step into the ball a little more. Most fellows who can’t hit curve balls are chaps who stride out of line or “pull away” from the ball.

If you have trouble with the slow stuff choke up your bat and start your swing a bit later. Most batters who have trouble with slow ball pitching are “pull” hitters. That is, they are meeting the ball “out front.”

And whether your difficulty is a slow one or a fast one a curve or a change of pace; whether you’re trouble is a high one or a low one, inside or outside, the most important thing of all to remember is simply this.

“Don’t hit at the bad ones. Make ’em be in there.” In a poker game the wise guy always remembers the old saying: “You don’t have to look.” In baseball, up there at the plate, it’s well to remember always:

“You don’t have to swing!”