There is a moment during every at-bat by Craig Counsell when it appears a magnetic force from the sky has seized his bat.
The Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman holds it well over his shoulders, but as the pitcher goes into his windup, the bat goes as high as Counsell can reach.
“That’s probably the strangest stance I’ve ever seen,” said George Brett, the Hall of Fame slugger who played for the Kansas City Royals.
Counsell’s batting stance is one no sane batting instructor would counsel. But a hitter would stand balanced on one toe while singing “Feelings” if it gave him success at the plate.
“That’s it. It’s what works,” Counsell said. “That’s the best way I can describe it.”
A batting stance is a hitter’s DNA, different from any other’s.
Remember Joe Morgan flapping his back arm like a chicken’s wing? Lee May, furiously rattling his bat back and forth? “Disco” Danny Ford practically standing with his back to the pitcher? Willie Stargell, whose swiveling hips made him look like a hula-hoopster? Rod Carew, holding the bat low and so loosely, it seemed he would drop it?
Like those approaches, Counsell’s is destined for the Unorthodox Batting Stance Hall of Fame.
After being released by the Los Angeles Dodgers after the 1999 season, Counsell wound up in the Diamondbacks’ 2000 spring training camp. He took the suggestion of hitting coach Dwayne Murphy to raise his hands a little. Counsell never bothered to ask how little.
“I was really struggling, and I was trying everything,” Counsell said. “I just felt real comfortable all of a sudden by doing that stance.”
Although Counsell’s stance is out of the ordinary at the start of a pitch, he doesn’t look much different from hundreds of other hitters when the ball approaches the plate. Counsell’s hands quickly come down to shoulder level, and his hips and feet move from slightly open to a closed, compact swing.
In hitting, what matters most is not how a stance looks at the beginning but how it morphs into the finished product.
“Just because they have an open stance, they all end up getting back to square,” said Charlie Lau Jr., a hitting instructor whose late father introduced revolutionary ideas to hitting in the 1970s. “Some guys may use funny stances for some type of a psychological feeling. But all hitters, from a kinetic standpoint, have to get to the strong hitting positions that my father called the ‘absolutes of good hitting.”‘
Open to change
Some of Lau’s absolutes include keeping the front toe closed in the direction of the plate during the swinging stride, getting your weight back before striding, using a tension-free swing and maintaining “flat” hands throughout the swing.
Lau Jr., whose clients have included New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, said the trend among hitters today is moving away from the closed stances once favored by players such as Ford, Joe Rudi, George Hendrick and Jack Clark. Lau Jr. says the result is a better overall hitter.
“Guys hit to all fields better than they did in the old days,” said Lau, who runs a hitting school in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “Guys were more dead pull hitters. It was easier to get them out with the outside pitch than today. My dad helped that evolution along.”
Lau’s father made his name coaching Brett early in his career with the Royals. Brett said he initially emulated the batting stance of one of his idols, Boston’s Carl Yastrzemski, who held his hands high.
Brett did the same through high school and the minors.
“But it didn’t work for me,” Brett said. “I gave my heart and soul to Charlie and changed my career. I went from standing straight up with my bat sticking straight up in the air to a lower position with my bat behind my left shoulder and my hands tension-free. Tension on the bat is cancer to a hitter.”
Father knows best
Most hitters today have stances in the neutral position, but there also are more open ones than in the past. Players such as Arizona’s Luis Gonzalez, Boston’s Johnny Damon, Milwaukee’s Lyle Overbay, Boston’s Jason Varitek and Oakland’s Jason Kendall keep their front hitting leg to the outside, giving them better vision toward the pitcher. The tradeoff of an open stance is more mechanics needed to get to the proper “hitting zone.”
Going to an open stance revived the career of Gonzalez, a Diamondbacks outfielder. After hitting only .258 with 10 homers for Houston in 1997, he opened his stance in the middle of the 1998 season and finished with 23 homers for Detroit. He went on to drive in more than 100 runs each of the next five years with Arizona, and hit 57 homers in the Diamondbacks’ 2001 world championship season.
“When I got traded to the Diamondbacks, one of the first things I told them was I had a new stance I was working on and hoped that they could stick with me,” Gonzalez said. “I felt it was something that could help me get to the inside pitch a little bit better. My career took off.”
Something that never took off was the “chicken flap” used by Morgan, a Hall of Famer who retired after the 1984 season.
“It became a habit where I wasn’t even aware I was doing it,” Morgan said. “I did it to keep the back arm away from my body. If you play golf, you keep your right elbow in, and that gets the ball in the air. I was trying to get the ball out of the air. It was a suggestion from (former Chicago White Sox second baseman) Nellie Fox when I was a kid, and it worked for me.”
Brett doesn’t fault Counsell for his odd stance. That doesn’t mean Brett wanted his oldest son, Jackson, using it. Brett said he admonished the coach of his son’s team when he noticed Jackson holding his hands very high – and striking out more often.
“I said: ‘Let me tell you a little secret, son. Daddy has forgotten more about hitting than this guy has ever read on the Internet,”‘ Brett said. “I told the coach: ‘I don’t care what you tell your son; don’t ever tell my son what to do with a bat in his hand.”‘
Counsell knows the feeling, especially with reports of many youngsters in the Phoenix area adopting his stance.
“A lot of dads are getting upset with me,” Counsell said. “But everybody’s got to find their own way.”
Out of the box
Adrian Dater of The Denver Post picks the five strangest batting stances among former players:
Rod Carew: The Twins and Angels star bent his back leg, leaned back and held his hands so loosely on the bat, it seemed he would drop it.
Dick McAuliffe: The longtime Tigers infielder had one of the first wide-open stances, with a low crouch and a high leg kick.
John Wockenfuss: Another former Tiger, he had a pigeon-toed front foot and wiggled his hand on the bat like he was playing a flute.
Joe Morgan: The Hall of Fame second baseman looked normal in the box – except for the constant flapping of his left arm.
Milt May: The catcher not only held his bat high, his feet were spread far apart.
Staff writer Adrian Dater can be reached at 303-820-5454 or adater@denverpost.com.
