As a result of rules that favored the batter, hitters didn’t worry about having to make contact. He had more than 4,000 hits and he didn’t get them by swinging a bat with his hands apart. Downing had one of the most open batting stances in modern baseball, and it was largely effective, especially for the Angels in the 1980s. It’s worth mentioning another player who was known for a dramatic leg kick: Darryl Strawberry, who hit more than 300 home runs. Not only is Ichiro an amazing hitter, he has a unique batting stance to boot. Mar 30, 2012 - Explore Patrick Abdalla's board "Batting stances", followed by 119 people on Pinterest. A few hitters had unusual stances. Lau convinced Brett, Hal McRae and others in the organization like Al Cowens and Willie Wilson to adopt his methods. Yastrzemski and Ripken were not afraid to change things up to get out of a slump. We will never know what the stances were like for these 19th century stars, but we can infer some things based on how the game was played back then. By the time his book “The Art of Hitting .300” was published in 1980, Charley Lau had cultivated a cult following that adopted his strategies on hitting a baseball. Either way, it was probably still a pain for pitchers to deal with. On August 30, the Sox acquired veteran lefthander Larry Andersen from the Astros. News on all your favorite celebs, reality TV, and movies. (How refreshing). It worked though, as he won seven batting titles using that batting stance. Movies were in their infancy when the Great Bambino stepped on stage as a raw rookie in 1914. Joe Morgan was famous for his “flap” where he flexed his rear left elbow as the pitch was being delivered. When he swung he uncoiled and propelled himself toward the baseline. When it comes to unorthodox batting styles Pakistan”s Fawad Alam is up there. I started writing when I was 10 or 11, writing crazy stories based loosely off weird dreams and fantastical novels (A.K.A the Harry Potter series). His arms raised high above his head, the bat even higher, it's a wonder Counsell's bat was never clipped by an airplane. Unlike Foxx and the Babe, Ott was a small man, weighing in at 170 pounds and standing just five foot nine inches tall. It looked awkward, but Seymour won the batting title that way in 1905 when he hit .377 for the Reds. Oh used what he called the “flamingo” leg kick, an exaggerated version of Ott’s stance, in which he lifted his front leg high off the ground and curled it close to his back foot. How about Billy Hamilton or Dan Brouthers? Contact was a given, missing a ball was unusual. But there were also taller guys like Elbie Fletcher, Augie Galan, and Tennessee Roy Cullenbine who consistently ranked near the top in walks. But we do have a sprinkling of videos of the Babe in his stance, and it was unique to the great slugger. Does being right-handed or left-handed determine your skate stance? He hit as many as 30 homers nine times, retired with 449 home runs, and in 2017 he was elected to the Hall of Fame. When he retired he ranked first in NL history in homers and third only to Babe Ruth and Jimmie Foxx all-time. It was an era when newsreels, radio and newspapers began sharing space with TV. Weight shift is one thing, but actually lifting the lead leg and holding it while in a batting stance has been unusual. If it did anything to help his numbers, it wasn't much - it might have done more damage than good. As the pitcher started his delivery, the left-handed batter would lift his left lead leg off the ground (about eight to twelve inches), then as he swung through the ball his front foot would come back to earth. 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Sometimes it really is just about comfort (or maybe he was just showing off). Baseball Almanac is pleased to present a comprehensive chart of ballplayer batting stances. The left-handed batsman managed to score a century in a four-day match against New Zealand-A side recently and he did all this with the most unusual of batting stances. No matter what he did, Yaz hit: the Hall of Famer retired with more than 3,000 hits and 400 home runs. Baseball players can stand out on the diamond in a variety of ways. Yaz tucked his jaw into his lead right shoulder, something he did his entire career no matter what stance he used. It’s been more than a century since Babe Ruth took his first swing in the big leagues. Walks were extremely rare and not encouraged. What did Cap Anson’s batting stance look like? Like Cobb, he held the bat low, practically cradling the nob on his belt. Tony Batista stood facing the pitcher in an extreme open stance, then he’d swing his arms and the bat toward home plate as if he was placing something on a table. Ichiro Suzuki is perhaps the greatest hitter the game of baseball has ever seen. He stood with his feet close together so he could quickly shuffle them into either direction depending on where he wanted to hit the ball. He worked on hitting from an extreme crouch, leaving very little room for the pitcher to throw a strike. It was rare for photographers of that era to take photos of players in their normal stances. Batters were in a position of strength. No superstar changed his batting stance as much or as dramatically as Cal Ripken Jr. Some players like to be calm at their starting point, like Cobb standing with his feet together and almost still, while others, like Dave Winfield, liked to move their feet and body (“dancing with the pitcher”) as the pitch was en route. They can stand out by showing off a big arm, cat-like fielding reflexes, or sprinter speed running the bases. When the Georgia Peach saw a pitch he liked, he would move either his top hand down (to hit for more power) or slide the bottom hand up (to choke on the bat). His batting stance, which helped him win three MVP awards and seven batting titles, was definitely one of the strange ones - there were batters who hit "closed" (front foot ahead of back foot), and then there was Musial, who closed his stance so much it's a wonder how he managed to see the pitcher over his right shoulder. Pitches shine with blazing fastballs and nasty curve balls that fall off the table. It was the fourth time he’d hit over .400 in six years. In a way, like snowflakes, no two are exactly the same. Even if they simply stand straight up, their strike zone (from the shoulders to the top of the knee for most of modern baseball history) will be smaller than a taller man. Sheffield's wild swinging of the bat back and forth above his head must have gotten annoying for pitchers, but when he connected with the ball, the whole act was a thing of beauty. Wee Willie Keeler and others had also used the method previously. The weirdness in batting stances has exploded since the age of Wockenfuss and other random oddballs. Ruth stood with his feet nearly touching each other and standing at the extreme rear of the batters’ box. Others have a tendency of just standing in strange positions for comfort or just to be "different." Also, let’s clarify something: Cobb did not swing the bat with the split-grip. The baseball was being thrown harder than ever before: it was moving, dipping and diving. When the pitch came he would slide his hand down the bat, so at the end of the day his stance made no real difference, it was just unique to "Youuuuk.". Tettleton held the bat almost parallel to the ground while standing straight up - a stance that would get you yelled at by your Little League coach if you tried it today. Now let us see some of the weirdest batting stances in Cricket. One historian wrote that Ruth’s follow through left his body “twisted in such contortion that he resembled a human barbers’ pole.”. When the pitch arrived, he’d pull his arms into hitting position and uncoil his body as he stepped into the baseball. On the field, Ott looked like nothing special, and off the diamond he didn’t seem any different than the average man on the street. It’s possible that Rose’s stance (the “Crouching C” stance that he used during the heyday of the Big Red Machine and for the remainder of his career) is the most imitated in history. As I got older my attention turned to sports writing: game recaps, features, profiles, and the like. Both played a long time (more than 3,000 games each), which gave them lots of trips to the plate to fiddle. It’s hard to imagine now, more than seven decades after his first major league game, but Stan Musial’s batting stance was revolutionary for his time. Carew had one of the most unconventional batting stances the game has ever seen, specifically because of the way he held his bat. How quickly can he uncoil his bat when he sees a pitch he likes? Cy Seymour, who had a 16-year career that started in 1896, was a known tinkerer. The batter no longer had a great advantage and pitchers were becoming sophisticated with their pitching repertoires. He remains one of the greatest right fielders to ever play the game. Alex Rios was once an up-and-coming superstar outfielder for the Toronto Blue Jays. Known more for his defensive prowess that his offensive punch, the only thing people remember from Plantier's time at the plate was his exaggerated crouch while waiting for the pitch to come in. A select few did attempt to use the Babe’s stance: teammate Bob Meusel tried it for nearly a full season. Noted batting stance imitator Gar Ryness (dubbed “The Batting Stance Guy”) has cataloged Ripken’s stances, even giving them names. REPLAY : In honor of everyone's favorite BSG E:60 segment airing again last night in an episode hosted by Geena Davis (aka Dottie Hinson) we're bringing back the Movie Stances lineups. Thanks to a brilliant video that surfaced this week on ESPN with McCutchen emulating some of the most famous batting stances in the game, people will … Why did the Sox part with Bagwell? Ott was famous for it, but few players followed his suit. It was really a sight to see. He hit four more home runs in the World Series, helping the Giants to a title in 1933 when he clubbed a pair of homers and had seven hits in five games in the Fall Classic. Lau hit .276 for the balance of his career, almost a 100-point improvement over his previous mark. From this setup you should be in an optimal position to hit any pitch. Sadaharu Oh was a physical match for Ott, built almost identical, and also a left-handed hitter. Dan is the author of three books on baseball. Ichiro eventually compiled more than 3.000 hits in the majors and won two batting titles. While some may argue that having an awkward batting stance hinders your ability to make contact with the ball, there are plenty of examples that show that this is not always the case. The constant standing still in a squatting position must have done wonders for his legs, but it never translated to much more than an average career as a batter. Of the 4,000 skaters in the Skatepark of Tampa Database, about half are goofy (44%) and half are regular (56%).But this near equality between skate Johnny Damon’s stance could have been called “The Shake & Wiggle” because he wiggled his bat behind his head and shook his body back and forth, faster and faster as the pitcher began his delivery. That’s #4. The batting stance has long been the Cadillac of the player’s repertoire. “Bags” fooled his detractors, winning the Rookie of the Year Award in 1991, and an MVP award three years later. He had a slightly closed stance, but not much. Learn how your comment data is processed. By 1983, his final big league season, Yaz had tried several variations, including a very closed stance and a version where he held the bat flatter near his shoulder (perhaps influenced by the teachings of Charley Lau). Ichiro employed a stance where he pointed his bat out at the pitcher prior to the pith, pinched his legs close together, and lifted his front leg as he prepared to swing, influenced slightly by Oh. Ryness looks out of place here in the Lexus Home Plate Club, the VIP-only lounge nestled beneath the Petco Park grandstands. A small handful of players stooped to help themselves over the years, most famously catcher Stan Lopata in the 1950s on the advice of Rogers Hornsby. These five batting stances are as fun to look at as they are to … It was a batting practice fastball league. Morgan used the tactic to remind himself to keep his hands back. As late as 1882 the pitcher could not release a pitch from above his hips. For a while no one kept track of them. Fletcher, Galan, Cullenbine, and Bishop all employed very low, crouching batting stances. Ken Williams of the St. Louis Browns — like the Babe a left-handed hitter — used Ruth’s stance for a few years with success, but then returned to his favored style. The cost of that division title? Moises Alou was one of the great ballplayers of the 1990's and early 2000's - but his strange batting stance, no matter how successful it made him, will always be considered strange by today's standards (like most things we talk about from the 90's). Your email address will not be published. It took a player thousands of miles from the U.S. to popularize the stance, and when he perfected it, he inspired an entire country to copy his style. Milt May stretched the bat two to three feet above his head as he waited in the box, almost as if he was raising a broom to the rafters. Some people in the Red Sox organization predicted he would never hit for enough power to be successful in Fenway Park. The A’s tried him for a year until they too got rid of his “crazy ideas.”. He won the MVP award in ’80 and a third batting title ten years later. Musial’s stance was so famous, and such a part of his image, that for years after he retired, when he appeared in public, Stan would do it for the fans. Cobb held his hands low so he could easily get them into position to bunt or slap the ball in any direction. But can anyone tell you what his batting stance was like? Downing was inducted into the Angels Hall of … Brett was so successful that Lau called him his “Frankenstein Monster.” Brett changed his batting stance late in 1975, leaning far back on his left leg like a “forward slash”. I use the word dynamic in the opposite sense of "static," because Weeks has far from static in the batter's box. Alou would hold the bat in a relatively normal fashion, but instead of planting his feet "normally," he would plant them and then invert his knees to the point where they would be grazing each other. While Gary Sheffield had one of the strangest batting stances of all-time, his was one of the most enjoyable to watch and imitate. “Wherever He Went, Interesting Things Happened”: Ichiro and the … he started as a pitcher but he converted to the outfield in mid-career. The bat came up slightly and the Yankee slugger followed through with great emphasis. I guess we should call it a “Parenthesis” stance, since the result is a left parenthesis when Pete was batting left handed and right parenthesis the other way. A square stance is where both feet are in line with the pitcher and parallel with the edge the batter’s box. But in their eras, it wasn’t the thing to do, so few players imitated their success. Pitches shine with bla. He tinkered and tinkered, and finally by 1962 he had developed a philosophy that he would hone for the next two decades until his untimely death from cancer in 1984. Dick McAuliffe held the bat very high out in front of and over his head while pointing his lead foot out to the mound. The graceful, conservative Hollywood style of Joe DiMaggio was going by the wayside. Can’t blame them much for that. The at-bat won't start until the batter is set in his batting stance, and while some may think of it simply as just a way of standing before hitting a ball, a hitter's stance is important on so many levels. 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