I was in a terrible slump during my sophomore year of high school. Couldn't hit a lick. Before I could even stride, fastballs were on top of me quicker than Anna Nicole Smith on a geriatric oil tycoon. I had no idea what I was doing wrong, hence the sub-.200 batting average, but the keen eyes of my coach quickly found a solution.
I admit, I was no big bopper, no swing-from-the-heels type of hitter. I had to play "small ball," slash out singles, steal some bases, be an annoying canker sore on the base paths - like a Tiny Hit Master. But one look at my batting stance - the bat curled around my helmet, pointing it towards first base - proved a need for adjustments.
"Have you ever seen Pete Rose hit?" my coach asked. "He's got that bat flat, then he whips it across the hitting zone short and quick. You've got to be short and quick, like a whip."
I agreed. By the end of the week, my batting average shot up a hundred points - and with it, the sophomore jinx was hewed.
Of course, that was sophomore jinx in the truest sense (actually being a high school sophomore), but that phrase has been prevalent in professional sports for decades. Many established baseball players, including several past Rookie of the Year winners, have had their careers debilitated by the jinx. And surely, the jinx will test Seattle Mariners' Ichiro Suzuki this year, the recipient of the 2001 Rookie of the Year award.
Like my travails in high school, the ability to make adjustments is crucial for any player to have a lasting major league career. Suzuki, who defines the aura of The Tiny Hit Master, showed us last season that he belonged among baseball's elite - American League-leading .350 batting average, 127 runs and 56 stolen bases.
But as he enters his second big league season, don't be surprised if American League teams have already spent months on trying to figure out how to get him out. Pitchers and pitching coaches - Suzuki's risible play-toys last season - probably went through hours of videotapes analyzing Suzuki's strengths and weaknesses.
That strategy ultimately brought down Kansas City Royal Bob Hamelin's career. In 1994, Hamelin was slated to become the next great slugger in the American League, hitting .282 with 24 home runs, which earned him the Rookie of the Year award. The next season, though, Hamelin hit .168 with seven home runs. He is now out of baseball.
But let's be realistic, Suzuki is like a coy jackal. Last year during spring training games, Suzuki seemed comfortable with just looping base hits to the opposite field, honing his swing for the regular season. This led pitchers to think he had a lazy bat, and they were ready to jam him with tight fastballs. Of course, it was Suzuki who jammed them to the showers.
There are no conceivable reasons - except maybe a freak injury - to believe Suzuki will suffer from the jinx. It's written in baseball's history book. Suzuki is a perfect Lego-piece fit of two other Tiny Hit Masters: Rod Carew and Pete Rose. Both had career batting averages above .300 and never hit more than 20 home runs in a season (Suzuki hit eight last year).
Carew, the silky Panamanian who wielded his bat like a magician's wand, started fast and didn't stop for 19 seasons. The seven-time American League batting champion made his debut with the Minnesota Twins in 1967, hitting .292 and winning the Rookie of the Year award. The next season, Carew hit .273, then .332 in 1969. Carew ended his career with a .328 lifetime average, hitting over .300 fifteen consecutive seasons.
That fast and furious start also held true for Rose, baseball's all-time hit king. Rose, a three-time National League batting champion who split his 24-year career with the Reds, Expos and Phillies, hit .273 during his rookie season in 1963, winning the Rookie of the Year award. The next season, Rose hit .262, then embarked on a streak of nine straight years of hitting .300 or better.
One argument could be: How can you compare Suzuki, who has one big league season under his belt, to Carew and Rose, two of the greatest hitters of all time? Though he has played in only one big league season, the 28-year-old Suzuki is a true veteran. The man won seven consecutive batting titles for the Orix Blue Wave in Japan, and the fact that he was thrown into the fire pit of the world's best baseball league didn't faze him a bit. He made it eight straight batting titles and then added the game's most prestigious honor, the Most Valuable Player award (only the second time in major history the award went to a rookie).
And it appears he has no weaknesses. Throw a tight one, the ball is bouncing around the first-base side bullpen for a triple. Throw low and away, it's a liner to left. And grooving one is like being sentenced to the guillotine. Pitchers are left to scratch their heads.
So welcome baseball's newest Tiny Hit Master. And forget the talk of that fabled sophomore jinx - Suzuki bit into pitchers last season, but this year, it's sure to have some venom.
» Ethen Lieser is a sportswriter for AsianWeek magazine in San Francisco.
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Posted March 27, 2002.
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