Bad season part of game, but good players rebound
Q: What’s it like in the middle of a hard season, what are these guys feeling? A: It’s tough, and it’s hard to put your finger on why it’s going bad because it’s basically the same team. It’s just a lot of guys are not having good years. And you know in order to win you’ve got to have two or three guys having career years, and we don’t have that this year. Q: Does that mean the team needs to be remade or blown up, as it were? Or do you think that it’s OK to have a bad year and still keep the core together? A: No, I think it’s OK to have a bad year, that’s part of baseball. You can’t have great years every year. Some of these same guys will probably bounce back next year and have great years. Q: One of the guys who’s probably going to join you in Cooperstown one day is Buster Posey, and he’s doing it again. And in the middle of a bad year, he seems to still perform day after day. What do you notice when you watch him play? A: Buster is a throwback to the old days. He likes to work, he loves to catch. He gets beat up back there, and it doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s just a good player, that’s all. Q: You were mostly a pull hitter, right? A: Well, I wasn’t in the minor leagues, but I was when I got to the big leagues. When I came up to the big leagues, my first day I spread the ball around. I hit every pitch that first day when I went 4-for-4. And for some reason the Giants wanted me to pull the ball more, so they sent me to spring training early with Lefty O’Doul, just to teach me how to pull the ball. He had me pulling everything and I was pulling it foul, but I became strictly a pull hitter. That takes away from your average, but it will probably add more home runs. So that’s
why I became a pull hitter. Q: Did they use to pull the shift on you, too? A: Oh they had some of the craziest shifts I’ve ever seen. The shift was popular. Q: I think it was you and Ted Williams who were the only guys they put the shift on, right? A: I think we were the only two. Q: Did you ever get to know Ted Williams, Willie? A: Very much. I learned a lot of hitting from Ted Williams. Q: What was it like to talk to Ted Williams about hitting? What did he have to say? A: Mostly get a good pitch to hit. The first thing was bat selection. He wanted you to have a bat that you could handle, and then getting a good pitch to hit. As you know, he had a great eye. He didn’t swing at many bad pitches. He just took me under his wing.