OCR Text |
Show K I II I 11 ?; 4P- W,f I i t Short, Choppy Dabs at i Ball "Were Sending ill Good Player to Bush (hj Leagues When I j One Day tie i; Happened to II Swing Hard and llJ Sent Sphere Out j of the Field-Since Then Hornsby ! Has Been Climb- I I j i n g Remarkably jj ;Fast. J I fiZZZ? UST a twist of the f-u wrist; just a change L IJ of swing. That is the 1 ' difference between a l Iji I baseball hero and a I i ; N baseball failure, t 19 ' v-sy Roger Hornsby of I 11 tne Cardinals a year ago was a, con-4 con-4 I ; demned failure and almost sent back to nil e mnor leagues. Hornsby could not ; Qit an there was grave doubt that he j fl ' ever would hit in major league com- f III pany. How bad Hornsb3r was in this ! i respect is shown .by the fact that he IJ batted but .246 in 1915 and did not have Hi! a single triple or home run to his credit. rjl " Roger looked like a comer in the field, Imi ; but unless he could bat the best lie ft lj : could ever hope for was a place in the j&f i . minor leagues. J Now Hornsby is batting around .320. rJu is leading the National League in total fill' bases and is a player beyond price. The Cardinal management has turned down 'fill an offer of $20,000 for the young in-Ill in-Ill fielder and could probably get more for fl him were he put on the market. hi "What has caused such a marvelous IJ change in such a short time? Nothing 1 1 more nor less than a change in his IJ style of swinging. 1 "When Hornsby came to the Cardinals Jll he had poor batting form and Manager Huggins tried to develop him into a I'! more scientific style. Hornsby started IH in to choke his bat and take "the chop j; that is used by the place hitters. He I , m forgot all about his backward swing, : i which was making him look foolish 1 ! I against good pitching. But Roger ' . seemingly could not master the scien- I , i tific system of hitting. II i He developed a stiff-armed poke m i which destroyed all force behind the jJM drive and at the same time made him II ise the sense of direction as to where mm ! he was going to drive the leather. He l 1 became a helpless batter and was going lI backward instead of making progress, ill When springtime rolled around this 1 year and the players collected at the 11 training camp in San Antonio, Hug-II Hug-II 1 gins was in a quandary. Hornsby II ! looked like a grand ballplayer if he IH I could hit. Huggins needed good ball ll I 'players and his problem was to make S ! Hornsby a hitter. One day Hiiggins saw Hornsby out of the regular practice prac-tice forget all about his scientific batting, bat-ting, let drive full force and put the sphere out of the park. It was a natural, natu-ral, easy swing and beautifully timed. The next time he faced a pitcher in practice Hornsby got orders to swing and swing he did. It was the change that made a great ballpla3er out of a mediocre one. From that time on Hornsby began to run up a batting average av-erage which promises to put him at the top of the National League in hitting. What makes Hornsby 's complete reversal re-versal of form in batting all the more remarkable is that it completely upsets the usual. Many batters come into the big leagues as hard swingers, only to find the sharper curves and greater va-riet' va-riet' of pitching there so baffling that their hitting percentage drops to almost al-most the zero point. When that hap-, pens the usual procedure is to change their style to the scientific one, with the bat held short and the swing short and sharp more of a cut than a swing. This not only gives better control of the bat and consequently the ball, but also makes the pitcher's work harder, as he has to use better control with the batter crowding the plate and in position po-sition to judge to a small margin where the ball is going. Not a few sue cessful batters in big league company have been changed from the long swing to the scientific style of batting. Hornsby is one of the few men who have ever changed from the scientific. st3rlc of batting to the swing and made good. In fact, at the present time it is impossible to mention a major league hitter who has done this outside of-Roger. of-Roger. With his swing, one of the longest used by a major league player at the present time, Hornsb3r has perfect form and his kitting is' free, eas3r and graceful. grace-ful. Roger stands up well at the plate and gets his swing back from over his shoulder. He follows through with his swing and there is no effort in bringing his bat to a stop. He is tremendously strong and swings a big and heav3r bat Ayith ease when holding it at the extreme end. Hornsb3r's style of batting is almost obsolete in the major leagues, and there uui a scattering few who follow .t. Wagner is the most notable example, while T3r Cobb also has a fine swinging st3'le of batting when he cares to use it. Tyrus, however, is a batter who changes his style and he cannot be ranked as a pure swinger. Larry La-joie La-joie can also swing when he wishes but Larry docs much of his batting with a choked club. Joe Jackson of the Chicago White Sox, on the other hand, is a slugger pure and simple, and in Ilomsby's class. Now da3's the slugger is so uncommon uncom-mon as to attract immediate attention. It is the most difficult style of all as it requires perfect sight and control. The swing must start so early that the eye has to make its calculation almost as soon as the ball has left the pitcher's hand. Great power of wrist is an essential es-sential to this style of batting as the bat must be guided with the leverage all against the batter. Under the circumstances Hornsby must be regarded as one of the real batting marvels of today and a player unique to the modern game. Hornsby 's rise to fame has been a meteoric one'. Hornsby is a country ' g . I mrroHAL league. ST . Mfe-Wl boy from North Fort Worth, Tex., and has been raised on a farm. In 1913 he drifted into the limelight of professional profes-sional baseball at Denison, Tex., that town being a member of the Western Association. Scout Bob Connery of the Cardinals ran across him and made arrangements ar-rangements to have him given a trial when the association season wound up. Hornsby was not a leader of the Western Association in fact, but an average player. He played in 119 games, made the same number of hits and batted .277. This included 26 doubles, dou-bles, 2 triples and 4 home runs, for a total of 16 bases. He stole 24 bases and scored 75 runs. In the field, Roger averaged .915, with 267 put-outs, 354 assists and 58 errors. Cominpr to the Cardinals his record, as slated prcvi-1 ously, was not even an average one un til he changed his st3rle last spring. With all his rise to fame, Hornsby is still but a comparative 3routh. He is still below his niajority and a youngster in his wa3's. Roger has an unlimited amount of confidence in his own ability, and this is one of the things that has aided in putting him on top. But for it his poor start would have marked him as a permanent failure. When Hornsby finished up with such a 'poor record last season, Manager Huggins had his misgivings as to keeping keep-ing him with the club this year, and considered whether it would not be wiser to farm him out and give him a chance to develop in a minor league club. Hornsby had no misgivings as to making good this year, and all he wanted want-ed to know was what he could go to increase his chances. Last year Roger was more a stripling than a fully developed de-veloped and set man, and he needed weight to fill out his frame. Hug"ins told him that one of the main things that was holding him back was his light weight and consequent lack of strength. Hornsby made Huggins' eyes and those of his teammates bulge out last spring when he reported at the training train-ing camp by the way he had increased in weight. He put on some 20 pounds (luniifr tlie off season. "How in blazes did you swell up that way during the winter?" was Hug gins' first question. "Are you padded out or is it real meat?" - i "Well, you see, 3'ou told me if I could put on a bunch of weight I would have a better chance to succeed," was Hornsby 's repty. "So I just went back to the farm to get that weight. I ate j all of the grub I could get, five meals ., a da3 for me, and then drank milk by jjj the gallon. No, I didn't do any more m worjc that T had to, just enough to get j'l .upan appetite." :l tm m |