Word: carewe
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Like Williams, Carew can tell with a single heft if his bat is minutely out of order. Williams once lifted six bats, one by one, then unhesitatingly picked out the weapon that was a half-ounce heavier than the others. Carew sent a recent shipment of bats back to Hillerich & Bradsby, maker of the famed Louisville Slugger. His exasperated explanation: "Every one was the wrong weight, and the handles were all too big." Interpretation: the wood was not shaved within the proper tiny fraction of an inch of perfection. Like all the other great hitters, Carew scrupulously cares...
...Squinch. Even Carew's vices serve a pragmatic purpose. He is fond of wrapping a hunk of Red Man tobacco in two sticks of Doublemint gum and popping the wad into his mouth. The critical mass bulges his cheek, giving him-he swears-a better view of the incoming pitch. "When it's tucked in there, it makes my skin tight. When your skin is tight like that, you can't squinch your eye, which means more of your eye is on the ball. It's important not to squinch when you're up there...
Bats are so valuable to Carew-and Carew's bat so valuable to the Twins -that a locked closet next to the clubhouse sauna is reserved for his lumber. The heat of the sauna "bakes out the bad wood," as Carew phrases it. He also keeps a supply of bats in his locker stall, safely distant from the communal bin in the tunnel leading to the dugout. "I see guys bang their bats against the dugout steps after they make an out. That bruises them, makes them weaker. I couldn't do that. I baby my bats, treat...
...Carew is a fleet runner who legs out a good percentage of his hits each year. His speed provides a sure-fire method of breaking a slump: bunting. In fact, he lays down bunts better than anyone since Phil Rizzuto. Once in spring training he challenged a teammate to toss a sweater onto the infield, then rolled a bunt into its enveloping folds. The sweater was moved; he bunted dead center again. More than a dozen times, first on the third-base line, then the first-base side, he put the ball on target...
...slumping Carew makes plans to bunt even as he drives to the ballpark. His technique is far more effective than the superstitious rites of old. The Yankees' Jake Powell, operating in the '30s on the then widely held belief that finding a hairpin brought base hits, once followed a woman for three miles after noticing that a large bone pin in her hair was loose. When it finally fell, Powell scooped it up, rushed to the park and -confidence restored-tripled his first time up. Al Lopez, who was a National League catcher...