HOW WANER GOT HIS 3,000
Wait For Good Pitching, Trap Pitcher By Intentionally Wasting Some, His Counsel
"How does a player go about amassing a total of 3,000 hits in the majors?
Paul Waner, one of the very few qualified to answer, makes it sound very simple.
'Wait until you get good pitches and swing at them,' is his terse explanation. 'I didn't always wait for the fat pitches, however,' he adds. 'That's why I didn't reach the 3,000-hit mark until my seventeenth year in the majors instead of arriving at the goal a couple of years previously.
'It's possible to get base hits while swinging at bad balls. I got my share in my 19 years. But where a consistent .300 hitter can usually hit four out of ten good pitches safely, he's lucky to hit one out of ten bad pitches safely.'
While 'Big Poison' admits he didn't always practice what he preaches, his failures to do so could not have been very frequent. For only one of the six other players in the history of baseball who were credited with 3,000 hits before him reached that goal in less than 18 years.
Waner's view that hitting at good pitches is what makes good stickers isn't exactly novel. We've heard many another big leaguer say the same thing. But the former Pittsburgh and Braves' outfielder offers another hitting theory that surprises no end.
'A hitter who doesn't try to do his best every time he steps to the plate,' he calmly opines, 'can be of more value to his club than one who attempts to knock the ball out of the park on every turn at bat.'
Impossible, you say?
Well, reserve judgment until you hear Waner's explanation.
'A smart pitcher,' he says, 'tries to build a batter up for a letdown. A smart batter should try to do the same against a pitcher.
'For example, in a game in Brooklyn, Whit Wyatt went to work on me like the master he was. When he got two runs ahead, he threw me fast balls inside as well as curves outside if there was nobody on base. He was trying to find out if I could pull his high hard pitch. If I showed I could by lining a homer over the right field fence, he'd still be a run in front and would know what not to throw if I came up in the clutch.
'But I was thinking as fast as he. I could have hit one over the wall. But I knew one run wouldn't help. So I backed away and fouled that inside pitch to left field, giving him the impression that he was too fast to pull.
'All that time I was telling myself that the time would come when I could win it by unloading on that serve.
'And I was right, though sound strategy robbed me of the chance.
'I was up with two mates on base in the bottom of the eighth. A homer would put us in front. I knew I had set the stage to get that pitch again. I got it, too, and I'm confident I could have knocked it right out of the park. But I had to sacrifice. No chances could be taken on my popping up. Percentages called for me to put the tying runs in scoring position with a bunt.
'The strategy, I repeat, was sound. I mention this only to show what I mean when I say a batter shouldn't try to do his best at all times. His worst now and then can turn out to be most helpful in the long run.
'Countless times I installed false security in a pitcher by purposely looking bad on pitches I could have 'murdered' when it wouldn't have done him much harm, and then I wrecked him by hammering the same pitch in a clutch later on.
'As I look at it, most games are close enough so that there comes a time when a long hit can give your side victory.
'Thus, I thought mainly of making sure I'd get the pitch I wanted in that spot, no matter what hits it might have cost me to arrange it.
'If every player on a club would do the same, you'd have the closest thing to an unbeatable outfit ever put together.' "
-Joe Cashman, Boston Record (Baseball Digest, June 1958, reprinted from the first issue of Baseball Digest, August 1942)
