Joined: 10 Aug 2006
Posts: 3241
Location: In front of my computer
Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 6:35 pm Post subject: Excellent Wade Boggs Interview
I like this SI Interview alot.
Walk This Way
If I could, I would take the following two excerpts and tack them on the clubhouse wall:
Quote:
SI.com: When you came to New York in 1993, the Yankees were Mattingly's team, but it was your high-on-base-percentage style, which differed from Mattingly's aggressive approach, that ended up as the model for the patient style the Yankees offense developed in the '90s, and even to this day.
Boggs: Rick Down was the hitting instructor at the time, and his style was a lot like Walk Hriniak [a Charlie Lau disciple who was a longtime hitting coach with the Red Sox], so it was very easy for me to change hitting instructors. Down had said [to me], "You've been a godsend because you're the type of hitter that I want my hitters to look at." Donnie asked me, "How do you walk 100 times a year?" I said, "Very simple. Take 2-0." His walks went from 39 to 61 [from 1992 to '93]. They almost doubled in one year and all he did was take 2-0 on certain at-bats. The one thing that we tried to do [as a team] was get [the opposing pitcher] to the 100-pitch count by the fifth inning. We knew that if we got to the 100-pitch count by the fifth inning we were going to win the game. That was the philosophy we went by and since then, the team has adopted that whole mentality that everyone in the lineup just wears down a pitcher, and extends the at-bat by pitch, by pitch, by pitch. Bobby Abreu falls right in those lines. These are the types of hitters that just wear down a pitching staff.
and this one
Quote:
SI.com: Plus, the Yankees seemed to foster that kind of strong work ethic under Buck Showalter and later Joe Torre, too.
Boggs: I think a professional athlete has to take that initiative on himself. I mean, you are a professional athlete, you get paid a lot of money, and you are not getting paid to sit in the clubhouse and play Nintendo and watch TV. When it's time to work, you go and work, and if it takes extra work then that should be something you do on your own. I didn't need Joe Torre or Buck Showalter to tell me to go out and take extra ground balls. I think it's the responsibility of the athlete to do that.
I think it is fine to take a 2-0 unless it is exactly what you want. At 2-0, you are already halfway to getting a walk. If you take a strike you are still at 2-1, a favorable count. If you take a 0-0, the pitcher has you in a big hole, which is why Duncan preaches to his pitchers to throw first pitch strikes.
Also not every hitter is Wade Boggs who feels he has the advantage at 1-2 (and probably did).
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