Brent Mayne

Carlos Santana’s Collision at the Plate

I’m in Italy right now doing MLB’s European baseball academy. This is the third year I’ve done it and it’s a lot of fun. Some of the future blogs will feature a few of my adventures here…keep checking in. Anyway, I’ve been out of the loop for a week or so and just got a chance to check in…and I’ve got about 19 messages asking my thoughts on Indian catcher Carlos Santana’s injury during a collision at home plate. For those who didn’t see it and wish too, click here.

Alright, so here’s my take. Collisions at the plate are part of the game. It’s every catcher’s responsibility to figure out a way to deal with this play safely and effectively because it’s inevitable. Eventually, someone’s gonna run into you – like it or not.

You don’t want to be a catcher who is scared of getting injured and you don’t want to be that guy who pulls the rip cord and bails when things get dicey. Whether you actually are a tough guy or not, you want to at least appear like you’ve got the balls to hang in there. This may sound goofy, and for sure it’s an intangible thing, but your team needs a strong presence behind the dish. Having toughness in that position contributes in a big way to the fabric and make-up of a team’s personality. Simply put, a guy who shys away from contact (in my opinion) isn’t helpful.

So what to do? Well for one, DON’T do what Carlos Santana did. Or what I see Russell Martin do all the time. Throwing that left leg out into the baseline like a hockey goalie is poor technique, dumb, and a recipe for disaster. Don’t believe me? Watch that video clip. It’s a miracle the same thing hasn’t happen to Martin yet (look at the photo.)

Russell Martin playing with fire by getting his left leg in a weird position.

In order to gain enough confidence to hang in there and complete this play, the first thing you need to do is buy my book. I’m serious. Buy it now. You’re still gonna be terrified when a tattooed giant like Josh Hamilton is bearing down on you at full speed, but at least you’ll have a plan and will be in a good position if the worst case scenario happens. And that might just give you enough guts to hang in there. Or maybe not…he is pretty big, fast, and tatooy.

Amongst the key points you’ll learn in the book: How to get low (if you’ve ever played football, you know that the lowest guy usually wins in a collision.) How to actually have some momentum going into the play so you’re not just a sitting duck. How to get your joints (knees) in safe positions…positions that, if hit, bend in the direction God intended them to bend. Maybe most importantly, how to move into the play at the appropriate time so that you maintain as much peripheral vision as you can for as long as you can. This last one really cuts down on the surprise hits.

So in summary, I guess my point is the play is GOING to happen. It’s inevitable. Trying to avoid contact is kind of like driving on the freeways of southern California or the streets of downtown Manhattan defensively. Your best bet is to be aggressive and mix it up. Or maybe a better analogy would be a football player playing soft and trying not to get injured…his odds of getting hurt are actually increased. Simply take control, be aggressive, and learn how to make this play the right way. Your team will love you for it and if you’re anything like me (and you probably are if you’re masochistic enough to catch) you actually like getting your bell rung once in a while.

Good luck and lets all hope Santana makes a full and speedy recovery.

The master of disaster Mike Scioscia.

The Year of the Pitcher 2010

I’m not positive, but to find a season with as much pitcher domination as 2010, I believe you’d have to go back to the last “year of the pitcher” in 1968. What is going on? Why is this happening? The no-hitters, the near no-hitters, the perfect games, the pure domination. I’ve been thinking a lot about it and until a couple days ago had no clue.

Initially I thought (like many people) that it all had something to do with MLB’s steroid and PED enforcement. But the simple fact is, pitchers partook in the drugs every bit as much as the hitters, so that kind of flushes that theory down the toilet…or does it? The more I think about it, I do think this “year of the pitcher” involves PED’s.

Ok, so here’s my latest theory. In order to survive the steroid era, I think pitchers had to develop pinpoint accuracy with their repertoire. Through trial and error, I’m thinking they figured out their wicked stuff or extreme velocity wasn’t enough to get the job done against the freaks they were facing. The new strength of these hitters simply shrunk the traditional holes they had in their swings.

So my theory is, pitchers adapted with control and location. Now fast forward a bit to the year 2010. MLB cracks down steroids creating obvious adverse effects to strength and power (of both hitters and pitchers.) But here’s the kicker. I don’t think the elimination of PED’s has hampered the pitcher’s ability to locate. In other words, everybody’s less strong, but the guys on the mound retained their advances in ball control.

Without the gorilla strength, hitter’s holes have returned and enlarged. But unfortunately for them, they’re facing guys who can hit spots the size of a dime…with multiple pitches no less.

Doc Halladay's perfecto is but one of many outstanding pitching performances this season.

Now, to be quiet honest, I don’t think this is going to last forever. I’ve predicted this state of the game many times before. I’m telling you, don’t be deceived into thinking baseball is cleaning up. Were just in a bit of a holding pattern. Player’s are in-between drugs. As soon as guys get desperate enough, they’ll get a bit more daring and start using new stuff. Couple that with the reality that the drug producing business is about 10 years ahead of the drug catching business and MLB (in my opinion) doesn’t really want to catch anybody (why would they…it’s just bad business) and you’ve got a recipe for a new drug renaissance…soon.

So that’s my theory on why were experiencing the “2010 Year of the Pitcher” in a nutshell. It’s either that or the fact that baseball is just cyclical and now’s the pitcher’s turn. Whatever the reason, I sure am getting a kick out of watching it go down.

Brothers K part 3

Alright, I know I’ve been wearing you out with the baseball wisdom of author David Duncan from his book The Brothers K. But I’m just so impressed with the fact that he wasn’t a ballplayer (at least I don’t think he was), yet his insights are that of a career baseball man. They’re so right on the mark.

Ok, this is the last one I’ll throw at you…I promise. But keep reading, this one’s juicy.

To set this passage up, the author is talking about his father and career minor league pitcher, Papa Toe. I’d just like to add that I never thought about professional baseball in this light – until I read this. But I sure as heck felt it and lived it.

Watching Papa Toe pitch through the years — the body language, the easy grace, the pure focus, time after time — any fan who didn’t know him would have sworn that there was nothing more important to this man than the game he was playing. Of course, his family knew better. Most ballplayers’ family members know better. But the good players are all like Papa: their faces tell you nothing. And professional baseball is beautiful to watch largely because of this.

A pro contract is a kind of vow: a man agrees, in signing it, that he will perform as though his personal life, his family, his non-baseball hopes and needs do not exist. He is paid to aspire to purity. For the duration of every game he has not only to behave but really feel that the ballpark is the entire world: his body is his instrument, so any lack of this feeling will soon be reflected in his play. The purity of commitment really isn’t much different than that of the Hinayana monks, they with their one robe, one bowl, one icon; ballplayers with their uniforms, their bats, their gloves.

But purity has a brutal side. Sometimes a strikeout means that the slugger’s girlfriend just ran off with the UPS driver. Sometimes a muffed ground ball means that the shortstop’s baby daughter has a pain in her head that won’t go away. And handicapping is for amateur golfers, not ballplayers. Pitchers don’t ease off on the cleanup hitter because of the lumps just discovered in his wife’s breast. Baseball is not life. It is a fiction, a metaphor. And a ballplayer is a man who agrees to uphold that metaphor as though lives were at stake.

How frickin’ good is that? Man o man. I sure wish I would have read that as a player. That type of perspective may have helped me hold up my end of the bargain a little bit better. Play my part a bit better. This also reminds me of one of my favorite baseball quotes of all time…

“Sometimes a hitter gets a hit, sometimes I strike them out, but in neither case does anyone die.”                                        ~  Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez

I never really thought of it this way, but Orlando was a pretty brave character to make a statement like that, especially if he did it as a Yankee.

"El Duque"

By the way, a big congrats to Andre “the Hawk” Dawson, Doug Harvey, and Whitey Herzog. The 2010 Hall of Fame class.

"The Hawk" comin in hot.

The Brothers K Part 2

A couple posts back, I mentioned that I had been reading a great book called The Brothers K by David Duncan. There’s a few passages in the book where I was blown away by the author’s grasp of baseball’s inner workings. The first one dealt with catcher’s framing the ball, and this next one deals with a ball player’s thought process.

To set this passage up, the author is trying to describe the impact that his father had when he got a chance to pitch on his minor league team. His dad was older, had no aspirations of moving up to the big leagues, and was more or less playing just for the joy of playing.

Watching Pap have his fun, many of the young players began to have trouble recalling just where their anxieties and personal crises had been located. Their body language would change. They’d begin to make wisecracks and dumb cracks and old-fashioned novocaine-brained baseball chatter. Then as far as Hultz (their manager) or anyone else could tell, they’s stop thinking entirely and just play ball for the pleasure of it — and it is a well known fact that when entire teams stop thinking and start playing for fun, wonderful things happen.

It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of this kind of thought-stopping influence, so let’s consider it from another angle. A pitcher throws a baseball eighty or ninety miles per hour at a hitter standing just twenty yards away. This means the hitter has about the same amount of time to decide what to do with a pitch as a chestnut-backed chickadee needs to take a crap. As any good birder will tell you, this is very little time. Nevertheless, ballplayers spend it in a wide variety of ways. One of the common options, and possibly the worst, is to spend it thinking. In the time it takes a pitch to reach the plate, a really quick-minded hitter can get in as many as five syllables’ worth of baseball thoughts. Here are three typical examples:

1. “Inside…ooops!…strike.”

2. “Change-up…shit!…fastball.”

3. “Fastball…oh damn!…change-up.”

The obvious moral here is that once a pitch is released, there are very few baseball thoughts worth thinking. This is why the preferred option of most good hitters is to spend pitch-to-plate time not thinking at all. “No-Think” is the name Peter gave to his mental state while awaiting a pitch — because a harrowing complication in this option is that even the thought “Don’t think!” is a thought. No-Think means: the ball comes: react. No decision-making, no reasoning. A pure, carefully trained, hopefully inspired reflex is all that’s wanted. And the difficulty of achieving No-Think — the paradoxically effortless effort required to gain access to this realm of pure reflex — is the explanation of virtually all the quirkiest quirks of ballplayers the world over. It’s what leads them to chew the unseemly substances, scratch the unseemly body parts, chant the gibberish, browbeat the Lord, sleep with their bats, pop mystery pills, worship everything from Shiva’s lingam to dead chicken parts, and so on…

So the Tugs’ inexplicable transformation, with Papa on the mound from a bevy of uptight young ballthinkers into a loose team of No-Think ballplayers was no small thing. On the contrary, it was the kind of inexplicable blessing that smart managers will hire, fire, lie, cheat, pray, beg and steal for — because more often than not it leads to a third predictable result: wins.

Alright, hope you got that and it wasn’t too much. It sure rang true to me. Here’s a few more images from the All Star game that rolled in from Michael Zagaris.

Kevin Long, A-Rod, and myself around the cage at the All-Star game.

Michael "Z-Man" Zagaris and I ham it up.

Danny Field and I before the game.

Aftermath of the All Star Game

Catching the bullpen for the American League during the All Star game was an awesome experience. Great on a whole bunch of levels. I got to catch up with old friends like Yankee hitting coach Kevin Long, photographer extraordinaire and all around character Michael “Z-Man” Zagaris, trainer Rick Griffin, and MLB production guy Danny Field.

Then, I got to be around the best players in the world. I got to be on the field again and feel the rush. Got to hang in the clubhouse and even sign a few autographs.

The most surreal thing was being in the clubhouse. For the most part, surprisingly, it was very calm. Whomever was in charge had strict time limits on the media so generally it was just a few clubhouse guys, the trainers, the coaches, and about a billion dollars worth of baseball talent….and me.

It was strange sitting down at a table to eat lunch with A-Rod, Jeter, Mauer, and Ichiro. I mean really strange.

Then there was the catching part. Here’s what I took away from the experience more than anything. As you may remember, I caught the bullpen for the Futures game a few days prior. Well, during those bullpen sessions, I took a few skipped balls off my body. I went home that night with a few battle wounds due to pitcher’s wildness.

During the All Star game, I didn’t have one pitch bounces in front of me. Not one. Let’s see, I caught Pettite, Verlander, Valverde, Soriano, Soria, Bailey, and probably a couple more l can’t think of off the top of my head, and I probably moved my glove across my body to receive a pitch four times. Four times! If these guys said they were throwing a backdoor slider, than that’s where it was going. I swear, I could’ve caught them with my eyes closed. And were talking about guys who are throwing 95-98, breaking balls, changes, splits, everything well above average.

And the All Star guys were every bit as nervous as the Futures guys. That just goes to show you that the nerves never go away. Both the Futures pitchers and the big leaguers had great “stuff”…the simple fact was, the Grande League guys could pinpoint their pitches. The Futures guys just didn’t have the same command…yet.

Big League hitters have no problem with velocity. They’ll turn around 95 in a heart beat. Greg Maddux was right, it’s all about location and late movement.

Another really fun thing I got to do was lean on the cage and watch the best in the world hit while talking offense with Kev Long. I saw a lot of different styles and a lot of different approaches, and a lot of similarities too. Every guy hit from an athletic position, had a positive “downhill” stride, stayed connected with their hands and body, and had really relaxed hands among other things.

Things I didn’t do…Didn’t get any autographs. Didn’t corner Mike Scioscia to ask him about his play at the plate catching technique. Didn’t snap even one photo (sorry). Didn’t tackle super model Marisa Miller during the celebrity softball game. Didn’t break my thumb.

All in all a great experience. Thank you to Tim Mead and Dennis Rogers for giving me the opportunity.

Supermodel Marisa Miller.

MLB productions stud Danny Field.

The best hitting guy on the planet...Kevin Long.

Legendary photographer Michael Zagaris.

Me catching Andy Petite.