Donaldson talks shop with baseball’s Mr. October
Reggie Jackson says Jays’ Donaldson, ‘one of the best,’ writes Rob Longley.
It started out as a friendly greeting from one crusher of the baseball to another.
But if there wasn’t a baseball game to be played Saturday, Josh Donaldson and Reggie Jackson may have never left the batting cage at George Steinbrenner Field.
There was the 70-year-old Hall of Famer and current special adviser to the Yankees picking the brain of the 2015 American League MVP and one of the purest hitters in the game. And it soon became clear that at a rather serious level, Jackson has the utmost respect and appreciation for Donaldson’s swing.
How much respect? The fivetime World Series champ sees some familiar tendencies in the Jays’ third baseman’s action compared to what he brought to the Yankees, among other teams, when he was one of the best clutch power hitters in the game.
“I’ve certainly looked at his swing and when he hits the ball down, I see me,” Jackson said of Donaldson. “When he hits the ball to the opposite field, I can see me. Yes, I see some of me in there. Talking to him was a learning experience for me. I swung and missed the ball a lot more than he does, though.
“Right now, he’s one of the best in the game.”
For almost an hour, they talked — Mr. October and the Bringer of Rain — with the conversation only interrupted when Donaldson went to the cage to hit and Jackson reached into his pocket for his iPhone to tape it for his own raw instructional video.
It was quite the scene, really. With Jays teammates Jose Bautista, Troy Tulowitzki and Kevin Pillar gathered around to listen in at times, both Jackson and Donaldson were animated with a bat in their hands as they made their points.
But the fact Jackson sought out Donaldson and wanted to hear how one of the more prolific hitters in the American League approaches modern-day pitching was the ultimate compliment to the Jays star. You wouldn’t say Donaldson was awestruck, but he definitely appeared thrilled at holding court with one of the game’s greats.
“It’s humbling,” Donaldson said prior to the Jays’ 6-5 loss to the Yanks. “Reggie Jackson is one of the greatest of all-time and a Hall of Famer. I was talking to Tulo and Bautista about it and it’s one of those things where you don’t expect someone of his stature to continue to try to learn.
“He just wanted to pick my brain and he was testing my theories of what I was thinking and how I went about it. He was mostly asking me questions. He was kind of testing me in some areas. The good news is I’ve done a lot of extensive research and I’m very confident in what I’m doing and what I believe in and if people want to hear it, I’ll tell them.”
Jackson clearly has admiration for Donaldson’s talent, but also an appreciation for the way he is studious in his approach to the art of hitting. The way Jackson explained it, he loves the way Donaldson favours driving the ball and making level contact as opposed to strictly trying to get it airborne.
“I wanted to talk to Josh about his hitting philosophy because it’s as close to mine as you can get to or that’s what my understanding is anyway,” Jackson said. “When I hit the ball low, sometimes I would scrape my knee to the ground just like the way he does it. I wanted to have a hitting conversation with him because I wanted to have some of the terms that the kids are using now in our minor-league system, to get the terminology and the lingo right when we talk about it.”
Though decades apart in their peak prowess at the plate, Jackson and Donaldson have more in common than just being able to hit for power. Both are clearly students of the swing — Donaldson using it to continue his trajectory toward being one of the top hitters in the game and win his first World Series, Jackson to help groom prospects in the Yankees’ system.
And late on a Saturday morning, they were united by the language of swinging a bat at a ball.
“Everyone may have a different theory, but when you get (the bat) to the baseball — from Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth and from (Lou) Gehrig to (Miguel) Cabrera and Donaldson and Bautista — the impact is in the same spot,” Jackson said. “Getting to it and the description of it can be different.
“(Donaldson) has a good understanding of what he’s trying to do. Probably the best thing I could say is he keeps connected and keeps it simple. He doesn’t overthink it. He certainly makes a more conscious effort to figure out what he’s doing.
“At the same time, he’s very similar to me because he wants to do one thing and that’s to make things happen.”
Besides being familiar with Jackson’s swing from watching it on video, Donaldson sees himself as like-minded in philosophy when he enters the batters’ box. In his evolution toward becoming one of the better hitters in baseball, Donaldson has spent hours analyzing the swing of sluggers, past and present.
“He was one of the guys, whether he believed it to be true or not, he was one of the guys who was trying to do damage all the time,” Donaldson said. “He struck out a lot and hit a lot of homers and obviously a lot of big-time home runs in the post-season.
“It’s one of those things for me; what I want to preach to hitters these days is it’s OK to hit for power, but you also want to be a good overall hitter as well. I think Reggie did that for a long time. That’s something I continue to strive to be. It’s an every day process on how you go about it.”
Obviously, Donaldson has a long way to go to match the two-time World Series MVP, but the man who hit 563 home runs in his 21year career in the majors certainly seemed thrilled with seeing Donaldson up close and talking about the game with him.
“I had to come and talk to Josh because he’s used (as an example of top-flight hitting) quite often,” said Jackson, who watched Donaldson’s swing from several different angles. “Josh Donaldson does what I did. He has a different way of saying it and his swing might finish high, but he’s doing it the same way, very similar to the way I did.
“This guy’s swing is as level and as pretty as you’ll ever see.”