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Absolutely, Power Corrupts

Absolutely, Power Corrupts

No, not an article about Tom Delay. (I’m soooo funnny)

Mark Teahen is no exception. This odd swing of his — the reason he’s a good hitter but not a power hitter — has a rich provenance. There was nothing to do in Yucaipa except play baseball — or, at any rate, nothing else he wanted to do. Every afternoon he and his two brothers would go out into the backyard for a game of Wiffle ball. Right field — the natural power zone for a left hander like Teahen — ended at the back of the house. If you hit the ball on the roof, it got stuck in the gutter, so the boys declared what would have normally been a home run an out. It was left field, a low brick wall, that tempted the hitter. Reach out over the plate and serve the ball into left field, and you had yourself a home run. Mark and his older brother Matt, both lefties, developed an extreme tendency to go the other way, to try to hit the ball over the left-field wall. Only his younger brother, Mick, the lone righty, learned to pull the ball and hit with power.

A great article about two baseball players with different swings and skills in the midst of steriods and the rise of the power hitter in Major League Baseball.

It’s the paragraph I quoted that I like the most, though. It reminds me of playing baseball with my brother and our friends in the various front and backyards of our hometown. You could never pull it because that meant you would lose the ball in the woods, and whatever you do, don’t miss! A miss meant a mark on the garage door and an angry parent!

So, (cue music) although I wasn’t ever a great baseball player, it’s funny how those things shape you, your swing, your skills. I didn’t strike out too much, and I liked slapping line drives where people weren’t standing. I never hit a homerun at any level of baseball. But the one time I really crushed it, I just stood there like and idiot and watched it… “where the heck did that come from?” It bounced off the wall in left center and I only got a single because I only took 2 steps out of the batters box before I stopped to watch. Oh well!