MBB: Looking fastball.
(GP): Yes, and then you ground out to the second baseman and you’re walking back to the dugout saying, “You idiot. Why did you swing at that pitch?”.
You leave that pitch alone, maybeen its 3-0 maybeen its 2-1. Maybeen that 3-1 is not a ball and you walked. Now you wait until it’ 3-2. Now I’m either going to walk or I’m going to put the ball in play. You might strike out. You got two good things that can happen and only one bad one. its in my favor.
That’s what happened. I started getting more serious about when I should and when I shouldn’t swing.
MBB: Twenty-twenty hindsight…why couldn’t Vada have come over and told you that years earlier? acoustic electric guitar guitar string
violin string discount
4 string mandolin
(GP): Vada was probably the closest (thing for me) having a hitting instructor who aimed me at figuring out how to do things left-handed. Until then, it was just athletic ability, but not trained. I had no idea what I was really doing. I wish I had found out earlier; if someone had just told me to go back before you go forward, so you can recognize the pitch and do more with it…
Back then the common theory was “stay back”. I’m staying back. But then what do you do? You launch yourself forward. As I said, you have to go back before you go forward.
Right-handed, I did that, but I had learned to do it trial and error from Little League onward. It was a natural thing.
Take a quick look at the BB walks and on-base percentage column in Pettis’ line above. Learning plate discipline is not normally soemthing that comes later in a player’s career, and its usually self-taught, a technique the smarter ones latch on to so they can extend their career, powered by years of observation and advertent or inadvertent study. Pettis, though, ran into a fellow Centerfielder who had been a very good offensive player and they worked out a new approach to the switch-hitter’s approach when he was batting left-handed.