What Inspires Me? #18 Batter UP!
I watched a lot of baseball this weekend, including 5-year-old Jack’s T-Ball and Ben’s 8-10 Little League. Each time those pint-sized players stepped up to the plate—regardless of which team—I willed them a hit.
And as the spindly scowling pitchers went into their windup, I willed them strikes. Baseball is hard work. At one at bat, our pitcher, Jameson had to throw 11 pitches before the batter took a base. Eleven times that batter squared up, eleven times that pitcher wound up, eleven tense trys.
The MLB record for the most pitches at a single at-bat is 21. It was set in 2018 by LA Angels’ pitcher Jaime Barria who used up 21 pitches to finally strike-out San Francisco Giants’ Brandon Belt.
Later, my son Max, who coaches Ben’s team, mentioned during pre-game prep, how pitcher and catcher aside, players might only have a couple of chances to get hands on a ball, so they had to be ready, and they had to make it good. Which got me thinking about all of us…
In 1923, arguably Babe Ruth’s best season—the only season he was named the American League’s MVP—his batting average was .349.
Not only is that the NY Yankees highest single-season batting average it’s also the Yankee’s all-time highest batting average. (The Babe’s MLB career batting average is .342.)
In baseball, the batting average (BA), is defined as the number of hits divided by at bats. Which means that out of ten times at bat, Babe Ruth got a hit less than 3 1/2 times—which means about 7 times he was OUT!
There is only one player in the history of Major League Baseball with a BA of 1000—One Thousand! His name is John Paciorek.
Drafted by the Houston Colts, Paciorek played in the minors until 1963 when he was promoted to the Colt 45’s active roster. In his one and only MLB game—Colt 45’s vs NY Mets—right-fielder Paciorek went to the plate five times. He hit 3 singles, walked twice and scored 4 runs. That day Houston beat the NY Mets with a score of 13-4.
Paciorek aside, the highest all-time single-season Batting Average record was set by Tetelo Vargas, an outfielder on the Negro League’s NY Cubans.
In 1943, at the age of 38, in his final recorded season, Vargas posted a batting average of .471. That means he got a hit almost 1 or of every 2 at bats. But not ever player is a heavy hitter. The MLB’s average Batting Average is about .250.
Which means every time an MLB batter—the best of the best—takes the mounds chances are about 4 to 1 they’ll make an out. But they keep taking that plate. They keep swinging. That’s what inspires me!
So I’ll end with the advice Coach Max gave his players this weekend:
Square up before every pitch.
Keep your eye on the ball.
Want to hit!
