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The Natural

What makes a baseball hitter great?

In the book “The Natural” Roy Hobbs is a 35 year old baseball player trying to make it pro.  At the age of 19 he was on the top of his game.  With one horrible incident it was all turned around and taken away from him.  Sixteen years later he came back into the league to reestablish what he once had.  This time Hobbs was making a name for himself as a batter and outfielder for the Knights.  Originally Hobbs was set for a tryout with the Chicago Cubs as a pitcher and a hitter with a big time bat Wonderboy. 

Author, Charles Hessenius, explains in his paper that the baseball hitters with .400 batting average are decreasing as the game gets older.  He says that peak batting averages such as Ted Williams’ .406 in 1941 will never be reached again.  And he is right.  No one has passed the mark in over 50 seasons.  Hessenius proposes the idea that it may not be that hitters of today are not great because they cannot reach .400 batting average but instead the game has new standards of greatness.   A reason that hitters cannot reach .400 could be because of the increased play of pitchers.  New speeds of fastballs, new pitches, and breaking balls can make hitting harder than it was in the past.  This can play a huge affect on the hitter.[1]       

A greater hitter needs to do their “routine” when coming to the plate every at bat.  The researchers, McPherson and MacMahon state, “As Newell (1974) pointed out, a batter facing a pitch must deal with a sensory perceptual challenge as well as a motor response challenge.”[2]  The batter must deal with many different pitches coming at him.  Which pitch he chooses will influence his swing and how hard they do swing to make contact.  Great hitters always choose their pitch.  In their study they showed that both objective and subjective variables play roles on the batter decision to swing at the pitch or not to swing.

Conclusion

When I played baseball being a good hitter meant making contact every single time.  To make contact I studied the pitcher.  I watched when he walking to the mound, warming up, and pitching to my teammates.  I always felt that I needed to follow “certain procedures” in order for me to have a great at bat.  I would put one foot in the batter’s box, spit on my batting gloves, stare at the pitcher and imagine his next move, and then I would take my position in the batter’s box and grab my Saint Christopher my father gave me.  I was always a first fast ball hitter.  All pitchers want to get up in the count and I knew that from being a pitcher myself.  I always looked for that fastball first pitch.  Another factor that played a huge role for me was choosing the right bat.  On the website, baseball-bats.net they said it perfectly, “The comfort of the baseball bat to the hitter is the most important factor in choosing a bat.”[3]  This statement says it all for me and I’m sure for anybody who has ever played the game.  Roy Hobbs was a great hitter and he had his own baseball bat, Wonderboy.  Wonderboy was where Roy was.  He never left that bat.  It was made from a tree that had been split opened by lighting.  What makes a baseball hitter great is all about how they compose themselves within the batting box.  They must find that right pitch to swing at.  If they don’t their chances of hitting go down dramatically.  Although .400 hitters are impossible to have in today’s game, a .300 career batting average is just perfect.  It’s amazing to think that hitting the ball three out of every 10 at bats is considered good but when dealing with different pitch speeds, breaks and conditions it is amazing.

Bibliography

1. Hessenius, Charles, “Maybe There Were Giants, Or at Least Outliers: On the .400 Batting Average Myth and the Absolute..” Journal of Sport Behavior 22, no. 4 (December 1999): 514. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost. 

   2.       McPherson, Sue L., and Clare MacMahon, “How Baseball Players Prepare to Bat: Tactical Knowledge as a Mediator of Expert Performance in Baseball.” Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology 30, no. 6 (December 2008): 755-778. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.

   3.       “Choosing a Baseball Bat”. 2008. http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html.

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   [1] Hessenius, Charles, “Maybe There Were Giants, Or at Least Outliers: On the .400 Batting Average Myth and the Absolute..” Journal of Sport Behavior 22, no. 4 (December 1999): 514. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.  

   [2] McPherson, Sue L., and Clare MacMahon, “How Baseball Players Prepare to Bat: Tactical Knowledge as a Mediator of Expert Performance in Baseball.” Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology 30, no. 6 (December 2008): 755-778. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.

   [3] “Choosing a Baseball Bat”. 2008. http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html.