Inside Washington's Headlines

Every hitter has a hole

As a youth, I played a lot of baseball. Because I was a pitcher I spent a great deal of time practicing and worrying about how to grip the ball, what angle to have my arm when I released the ball, and such other things as pitchers worry about - which is a lot. Pitchers are creatures with more self confidence than common sense. Pitchers must throw a ball toward another player who has a bat and wants to hit the ball as hard as he can and possibly right back at the pitcher's head. That ball can hurt. So I also spent a lot of time studying batters. I wanted to know everything I could about every batter because they could literally hurt me or beat me with a timely hit.

I learned that every hitter had a hole—a part of the strike zone that he could not 'cover' effectively when he swung the bat. For most hitters, an inside pitch was difficult to hit. That’s where they had their hole (or holes, in the cases of some not very effective hitters). To compensate, those batters would move back from the strike zone and that meant they filled in the hole on the inside—but created another one on the outside because now the fat part of the bat could not reach the outside corner.

First I studied the batters to find a hole and then I tried to throw the ball through that hole. It was an endless game-within-a-game: As batters adjusted, I tried to adjust. I learned that every batter had at least one hole and most had two or three.

No hole?

Then one day in 1986 I went to Wrigley Field in Chicago and happened to meet a young player who had just joined the Cubs—Rafael Palmeiro. We chatted for a while and he told me how excited he was to be in the big leagues. He impressed me as a down-to-earth, regular guy. When he took batting practice, I watched from behind the plate and later, during the game, I watched him from center field. I watched him several times that season and I became convinced that Rafael Palmeiro had no hole in his bat coverage of the plate. It was incredible. Here was a hitter who could get his bat on any ball in or close to the strike zone.

After the 1988 season, the Chicago Cubs traded Palmeiro to the Texas Rangers. I gave a speech in late 1988 to a group in Texas and was introduced as a baseball fan (and specifically, as a Cubs fan). One of the questions from the audience had nothing to do with the topic of my speech; it was much more important. It was about baseball.

'Is Palmeiro any good?' I answered by saying that he was the only hitter I had ever seen who didn’t seem to have a hole in his swing, anywhere. I went on to explain that the reason a pitcher has a bit of confidence out there is that he knows that even if he makes a mistake and throws the ball to the hitter’s strength, and even if the batter hits it hard, approximately two out of three times, somebody will catch the ball and the hitter will be out. That, of course, presumes that the batter can get the bat on the ball, which he can't if it's thrown in his hole.

A future Hall of Famer

What this meant, in Palmeiro’s case, was that nobody could pitch him in a place that he could not hit. He would be able to hit the ball more often and that would increase his chances of getting hits. Palmeiro was going to be a very good hitter. Indeed, because he was also an excellent fielder and did not seem to be injury prone, I predicted a long and successful career for Palmeiro and predicted that he would some day collect his 3,000th hit and eventually make the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Earlier this year, Palmeiro joined other players and baseball officials to testify before a Congressional Committee investigating steroids use among major league players. He gave the most emphatic, finger-pointing denial of steroids use of any of the players. He impressed the Congressman, sports reporters and fans. Raffy came through the hearings not only untarnished, but a bit of a hero. In July of this year, Palmeiro got his 3,000th hit. He is one of only four players in baseball history to have more than 3,000 hits and 500 home runs. He seemed a sure bet to make the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Then, the hole appeared: Rafael Palmeiro had ingested steroids. He was suspended for ten games. Quickly, the fans and the sportswriters turned on him. His teammates and the players' union stuck with him.

The Congressional Committee announced that it was investigating to determine whether Palmeiro had committed perjury when he denied using steroids. During that investigation, apparently, Palmeiro implicated a teammate as the source of the steroids. But the investigation cleared the teammate. Players at all levels of baseball, from the minors to the majors, began to speak out against Palmeiro. He was an outcast. His team announced that Palmeiro would not play for the rest of the season. His career seemed to be over, his reputation damaged beyond repair.

You see, Rafael Palmeiro does have a hole. Apparently, with all his natural ability and the sweetest swing I have ever seen, a man who could make it without cheating still cheated.

Raffy’s hole was not in his bat, but in his head. You meet people like that in business and politics, too.

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