Posted by: Jude (wayout1@columbus.rr.com) on Mon Jan 14 02:06:29 2008

Hi J.M.

I do not have the same high regard for Bonds as a hitter as you do.
I look at his statistics, and his batting mechanics on tape before the 1994 strike. They look the same as they do today. (His body looked normal back then.) Even today with his long period of performance enhancing drugs his career slugging percentage has not caught up with Williams slugging percentage. Moreover, Bond's career batting average is not likely to reach 300, an unimpressive figure by today's standards.

Unlike Bonds williams did not wear a batting helmet or a thick arm protector, both of which enables Bonds to fearlessly crowd the plate choking up on a short maple bat. Nor did Williams have umpires protecting him from inside pitches as Bonds does. Given the tight strike zone that pitchers today pitch to it is little wonder that pitchers feel the necessity to develop an assortment of pitches. Keep throwing predictable fast balls and too many of them are going to get bombed.

Other advantages enjoyed by today's hitters are smaller ball parks, better bats (I witnessed a 404 homerun to dead center off of a bat that shattered in two), and perhaps juiced balls.

I think it is a mistake to include Mays with Williams. Williams slugging percentage, only exceeded by Ruth, was considerably higher than Mays and his batting percentage at 344 (fourth best in the 20th century) was 42 percentages higher. It is little wonder that when Williams died that a noted sports writer wrote that Williams 40 years ago was the best hitter of all time and would still be forty years into the future.

If it was your implication that Williams would have trouble with todays pitchers who throw heat you should be aware that Williams was a fast ball hitter who would actually look for the slider and adjust to the fast ball. How many hitters can do that today? Williams once told Roger Clemmens that he would have hit his fast ball but would have looked for his slider. Williams also stated that the most home runs he hit off a pitcher was Virgil Trucks, who was one of the top fast ball pitchers in his day. Williams said that Trucks insisted on continuing to challenge him with his fast ball. If there is any doubt that Williams could hit the ninety mile pitches of today, Bob Feller faced Williams enough that he was compelled to call Williams at his death the best hitter ever. Few pitchers today, if any, throw harder than Feller did, but you probably know that.

Williams led the 40's and then the 50's in batting percentages, on base percentages and slugging percentages. No one else has come close to this feat. Among the players he competed with in these three categories in the 50's were Mays, Musial, Aaron, Mantle and Killebrew. In spite of the fact that he missed almost two prime years to the military early in the fifties and was approaching a retirement age of 42 in 1960 he easily out did the competition in those three categories.

"Get a good pitch to hit" which for Williams was in the strike zone - most of the time in a section of the strike zone, is the philosophy that separates Williams in time and place from today's hitters who strike out too frequently trying to cover the whole plate in their quest to hit cheapened homeruns. Because he can stand so close to the plate and hit home runs Bonds is, as you see it a good model for you to use to teach your mechanics, but A-rod who stands far from the plate and strikes out frequently on outside pitches is not, and has gotten negative attention from you. I don't see many youngsters develop into good hitters who swing at pitches in every part of the strike zone and too frequently outside of the strike zone. Nor do I see youngsters wearing arm protectors and standing fearlessly close to the plate trying to implement your interpretation of correct mechanics.

Before camcorders there were other cameras around and certainly coaches have been around for ever. And certainly imitation has been around for ever. How do we know that two or all three of these have not created a progression that has resulted in hitters today that strive to hit homeruns with a swing that has little to do with high resolution technology, that can be used to justify a variety of hitting theories?