Baseball's Best Hitter Tries for Glory

Hit a baseball with a bat. Crack.

All things considered--and nothing is unconsidered in the serious business of games played by grown men--it is the most difficult task in sport. Consider the problem: a bat 2 3/4 in. in diameter at its widest, hitting a ball not quite 3 in. in diameter; two objects--one cylindrical, the other a sphere--meeting headon. Consider the speed: a major league pitcher's fastball traveling well over 90 m.p.h., hissing the 60-ft. 6-in. distance from mound to plate in 2/3 of a second. Consider the odds: the game's greatest stars failing the task seven times in ten, and still they are .300 hitters, worthy of holding forth at banquets in the winter and holding out for a bigger piece of the pie in the spring. And hitting .400 for the season? That would take the cake, and no one has done it since Ted Williams finished at .406 to bring glory to the summer of '41.

Now consider Rodney Cline Carew, the best damn hitter in baseball. He is the only man of his generation with the gifts--and the hard-won mastery of the art of hitting--to have a shot at joining the select club of the .400 hitters, which includes Ty Cobb, Joe Jackson, Nap Lajoie, George Sisler, Rogers Hornsby, Harry Heilmann and Bill Terry. In an era when batters must contend with night games and coast-to-coast jet lag --handicaps that the oldtimers never faced--the intense first baseman of the Minnesota Twins was hitting .402 last week and had been up to .411 when the season moved into July. In June he batted .486--with one astonishing eleven-game streak at .610. What's more, Ca-rew's performance this year is no fluke. He has a lifetime average of .332, which ranks him with the giants of the recent past (Williams, .344; Joe DiMaggio, .325; Stan Musial, .331). His performance makes a mockery out of the records of such current celebrities as the New York Yankees' Reggie Jackson (.267) and the Cincinnati Reds' Joe Morgan (.282). Carew has won the American League batting championship five times, and four of those titles came in a row. Only Ty Cobb (nine) and Rogers Hornsby (six) won more consecutive batting crowns. Now 31 and in his eleventh season with the Twins (in a state where they name snow cones after football players instead of candy bars after batsmen), Carew has spent a career as the best-kept secret in American sport--a long neglected but authentic hero. Now he can turn obscurity into immortality. According to no less an authority than Williams himself, Carew's chances of reaching his goal of a .400 season are good. Says Teddy Ballgame: "Of all the guys in the game now, I think he can do it."

Whatever the outcome in October, Carew's quest for the elusive .400 is a welcome and joyous event for baseball, helping to turn the sport away from its fractious present and back to its roots. After a generation of musical franchises, a decade of labor unrest in the locker room, a time of free agents and frostbitten World Series in mid-October, baseball sorely needs to get down to basics. Carew is the right man at the right time, a modern version of Wee Willie ("Hit 'em where they ain't") Keeler pushing the ball past grasping gloves, a Paul Waner incarnate lashing out hits to every field. Rod Carew--stirring the statisticians, enthralling the fans, enlivening the game, making memories.

Like Williams, Carew can tell with a single heft if his bat is minutely out of order. Williams once lifted six bats, one by one, then unhesitatingly picked out the weapon that was a half-ounce heavier than the others. Carew sent a recent shipment of bats back to Hillerich & Bradsby, maker of the famed Louisville Slugger. His exasperated explanation: "Every one was the wrong weight, and the handles were all too big." Interpretation: the wood was not shaved within the proper tiny fraction of an inch of perfection. Like all the other great hitters, Carew scrupulously cares for his bats. He bathes them with alcohol, removing the buildup of pine tar that is used to tighten the bond between hand and wood. "I can't stand a dirty bat," he explains. "Some guys leave pine tar on their bats and never clean them off. I can't understand that. How can they get a feel for the wood?"

Bats are so valuable to Carew--and Carew's bat so valuable to the Twins --that a locked closet next to the clubhouse sauna is reserved for his lumber. The heat of the sauna "bakes out the bad wood," as Carew phrases it. He also keeps a supply of bats in his locker stall, safely distant from the communal bin in the tunnel leading to the dugout. "I see guys bang their bats against the dugout steps after they make an out. That bruises them, makes them weaker. I couldn't do that. I baby my bats, treat them like my kids, because using a bat is how I make my living."

Carew is a fleet runner who legs out a good percentage of his hits each year. His speed provides a sure-fire method of breaking a slump: bunting. In fact, he lays down bunts better than anyone since Phil Rizzuto. Once in spring training he challenged a teammate to toss a sweater onto the infield, then rolled a bunt into its enveloping folds. The sweater was moved; he bunted dead center again. More than a dozen times, first on the third-base line, then the first-base side, he put the ball on target.

A slumping Carew makes plans to bunt even as he drives to the ballpark. His technique is far more effective than the superstitious rites of old. The Yankees' Jake Powell, operating in the '30s on the then widely held belief that finding a hairpin brought base hits, once followed a woman for three miles after noticing that a large bone pin in her hair was loose. When it finally fell, Powell scooped it up, rushed to the park and --confidence restored--tripled his first time up. Al Lopez, who was a National League catcher in the '30s and '40s, once ate kippered herring for breakfast 18 days in a row trying to preserve a batting streak that lasted 17 days.

Not to Squinch. Even Carew's vices serve a pragmatic purpose. He is fond of wrapping a hunk of Red Man tobacco in two sticks of Doublemint gum and popping the wad into his mouth. The critical mass bulges his cheek, giving him--he swears--a better view of the incoming pitch. "When it's tucked in there, it makes my skin tight. When your skin is tight like that, you can't squinch your eye, which means more of your eye is on the ball. It's important not to squinch when you're up there."

The technique apparently works, for Carew's eye is one of the sharpest in baseball. He spots the ball--its speed and rotation--as soon as it leaves the pitcher's fingertips. Says he: "I can tell by the rotation whether it's a curve, slider or fastball." What is more, Carew can often actually see the ball hit his bat. Kansas City Outfielder Amos Otis has a hitter's respect for the Carew eye: "Trying to sneak a pitch past him is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster." Says the New York Yankees' Catfish Hunter, who has been the premier pitcher of the American League since 21-year-old Carew was Rookie of the Year in 1967: "He has no weakness as a hitter. Pitch him inside, outside, high, low, fast stuff, breaking balls--anything you throw he can handle. He swings with the pitch; that's why he's so great. He has no holes."

To close the holes, Carew has four different stances, two for lefthanded pitchers, two for righthanded pitchers. His varying postures at the plate break with baseball tradition. Batters generally tinker with their stances only when in the dire despond of an extended slump; Carew alters his to fit the pitcher and the pitching tactics. Whatever his stance, it is taken as deep in the batter's box as he can get. If opposing catchers are not wary, he will move so deep that his left foot is completely--and illegally--out of the box. Says Carew: "The further back I am, the longer I can look at the pitch." When he has had his look, his wrists slash the bat toward the ball--quick as a striking snake. Carew has the wrists and forearms of a heavyweight, the result of a regular routine of weight lifting. He keeps a dumbbell in his locker in the clubhouse: on the field before games, he curls a 13-lb. metal bar habitually, almost absentmindedly. Says Twins Third Base Coach Karl Kuehl: "He handles that bar like it's a pick-up stick."

Despite his strength and bat speed, Carew completely avoids the modern hitter's greatest weakness: the instinct to pull the pitch on the shortest line to the nearest fence. The lust for the long ball and the glory of homers has contributed as much to the decline in high-average hitters in the post-World War II era as the oft-cited rise of relief pitching. Trying to cream a fastball low and away is a sure way to strike out. Rod

Carew does not strike out very often (52 whiffs last year). Nor are his many hits limited to a third of the playing field as is the case with most pulling power hitters. A lefthanded hitter (who throws rightie), he sprays the field like a grounds keeper's sprinkler; inside pitches are pulled, outside pitches go rocketing into left field, and, on the odd occasion when a careless hurler puts one down the pipe, the ball goes up the middle. Opponents cannot concoct a latter-day version of the Williams Shift--loading the defense to blanket a portion of the park--in hopes of stopping Carew. He thus has a lot of territory where they ain't. His ability to hit to all fields, coupled with natural speed and bunting prowess, is Carew's biggest advantage in his chase for glory.

Despite a long career at the top of his sport, Rod Carew is the least-known star in baseball's galaxy. He works his wonders in Bloomington, a suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul, cities owned--in the national mind, if not in reality--by Fran Tarkenton, Mary Tyler Moore and blizzards. Carew's feats have gone virtually unnoticed by the national press. Without argument the outstanding hitter of his generation, he has appeared on the cover of the Sporting News--baseball's Bible--only three times in more than a decade. In an era of jocks selling everything from perfume to pantyhose, Carew has made no commercials despite handsome looks and a charming, magnetic personality.

Even when it comes, recognition has sometimes been careless and absentminded, casually askew. In Carew's playroom is a 2-ft.-high trophy--the Joe Cronin Award--all polished wood and gleaming brass. The American League presented it to the great lefthanded hitter in recognition of his fourth consecutive batting championship. On top of the trophy stands the likeness of a batter --a righthanded batter.

Skinny Kid. Carew is fonder of the Medal of Honor given to him by his native Panama. Says he proudly: "I'm the only athlete ever to have won it." The feeling reveals something of his deep and continuing attachment to his Latin background. Although he has now lived in the U.S. longer than in Panama, he has not sought American citizenship. Asked by a reporter what it would be like to be an American folk hero, he replied with some astonishment: "I'm a Panamanian citizen. How can I be an American folk hero?" He explains: "I've kept my citizenship because to most kids down there I'm a national hero, someone they look up to. I think if I become a U.S. citizen they would think that I let them down."

Carew's climb to prominence--to being a folk hero in two nations--was long and slow, tempered by illness and early poverty. On Oct. 1, 1945, Olga Carew knew her baby was due and started the journey by train from Gatun, on the Atlantic side of the Canal Zone, to Gamboa, where doctors in the clinic could attend the child's birth. But the baby would not wait, so Margaret Allen, a nurse, and Dr. Rodney Cline, a physician, both of whom happened to be aboard the train, delivered the woman's second son. The nurse became the child's godmother, the doctor forevermore the stuff of baseball trivia. Rod was a sickly child who contracted rheumatic fever when he was twelve. His resulting weakness drew his father's alternating scorn and uninterest. His uncle, Joseph French, a recreation official and Little League coach in Panama, became a kind of foster father, taking the boy to ball games and encouraging him as he grew stronger to use his emerging athletic talents.

Rod grew up playing with rag balls wound in tape; his prize possession was a Ted Williams bat won for his superior play in local Little Leagues. He even slept with the bat and was brokenhearted when it was stolen after a pickup game. His mother recalls: "He was still, quiet and alone as a child. He was always walking around with a bat and ball in his hand." His two childhood dreams: Go to the U.S. Become a big league baseball player.

When Carew was 15, his mother immigrated to New York City and, after finding a home and a job, sent for Rod and his older brother Eric. Flying into New York at night, Rod stared down on the city. "It was so big from the air," he recalls, "I couldn't believe it." He entered Manhattan's George Washington High School (Henry Kissinger's alma mater), but did not go out for school sports; his afternoons were taken up by a part-time job in a grocery store to help support the family.

Eventually, however, he and a friend began playing in weekend sandlot games in Macombs Dam Park, adjacent to Yankee Stadium. The hitting touch developed in Panama had not deserted him. After a few weeks he caught the eye of a teammate's father who was a "bird dog"--an unofficial unpaid scout --for the Minnesota Twins. A phone call brought a scout; the scout made another call, which, in turn, fetched the Twins' farm director. Finally, when Minnesota came to town for a series with the Yankees, young Carew was brought inside the stadium for a try out.

He was a skinny, 170-lb. 6-ft. kid of 18 with the sort of lean, whippet's body that did not conjure up images of a slugger. Then he stepped into the batting cage. In a few short minutes, the onlookers needed no images--the reality was too splendid. Recalls Carew: "I was hitting some shots. I mean really hitting the ball." He blasted so many balls into the bleachers, in fact, that Twins Manager Sam Mele--fearing spying Yankee eyes--ordered him out of the batting cage: "Get him out of here before somebody sees the kid!" One month later, Rod signed with the Twins for a $5,000 bonus.

Stealing Home. He spent less than three years in the minors before he was pushed, at Owner Calvin Griffith's orders, into the starting job at second base. He batted .292 his first season and was named Rookie of the Year. (The National League's top rookie that year turned out to be quite a player himself: Tom Seaver.) Two seasons later, Carew stole home seven times, tying the major league record. His manager was Billy Martin, now the godfather of Carew's older daughter, Charryse. "I taught him how to steal home," Martin says. "That's all I ever taught him. As for hitting, he knew how to do that all by himself." Martin adds: "And he could bunt .330 if he tried."

In his early years in the majors, Carew was moody, a loner who made friends slowly and suffered slights poorly. In 1970 a runner crashed into him while trying to break up a double play. Carew underwent surgery for a torn knee cartilage and, thereafter, was gun-shy on the pivot. This did not endear him to Manager Bill Rigney, nor Rigney to Carew. In a rare admission for an athlete, Carew acknowledged his fear and tried to conquer his anxiety on the field. Rigney's public questioning of his courage did not help.

The effects of this injury and his manager's reaction still linger; Carew is reluctant to leave the lineup when hurt. Last week, though he had a minor back injury, he insisted on playing. Opposing pitchers quickly took advantage of his stiff swing by throwing high, inside and, for a change, effectively. Carew's average flagged, but he played.

In 1976 Carew was shifted to first base. He has since blossomed into a graceful and steady defensive player who--like all the great ones--makes the tough chance look easy. The loner has also become a mature team leader as well as the heart of the Twins offense. Though he has become a superstar, he has remained unassuming, claiming no special privileges--other than the right to coddle his bats. On the contrary, he shags stray balls for batting-practice pitchers--a job usually left to utility players and aging coaches. Once when he failed to run out a long foul ball that the wind suddenly blew fair, he fined himself for not hustling. Says Twins Manager Gene Mauch: "As impressed as I am with Rod Carew the hitter, Rod Carew the baseball player, I am more impressed with Rod Carew the man."

Much of the change that has come over Carew stems from a night in 1968. He went out to a local nightspot with friends for drinks and a favorite diversion, girl watching. That evening, Marilynn Levy had gone to King Solomon's Mines to celebrate her 23rd birthday with a high school chum. Marilynn was, as she puts it, a nice Jewish girl from North Minneapolis, Morrie Levy's pride and joy. Raised in a conservative family, she had led a sheltered--almost a programmed--life. "I never went out with anyone whom my family didn't know. I was raised as a good Jewish girl to get married, raise children, clean the house and take care of my husband."

In King Solomon's Mines, the black baseball player from Panama was introduced to Marilynn Levy. Recalls Marilynn: "Sports? I didn't know from the Twins, and like a cocky little broad, I wasn't impressed, didn't want to be bothered. So I said, 'If Tony Curtis walks in, bring him over instead.' " Carew called her a flake. Hardly an auspicious beginning, but he walked her to her car and asked for her telephone number. For the first time in her life, Marilynn Levy gave a guy she had met in a bar her number. "He called me, and we started seeing each other. No big thing. I was 23 years old; this was my fling. It was hard because I didn't want to take him home and upset my parents, so we would always meet someplace."

They dated for a while--Marilynn ducking to the floorboards every time she saw a red car that resembled her father's. "It was humiliating for Rod and finally I said, 'Listen, this has got to stop. It's been nice but let's call it a day.' " They stayed apart for several months, but when spring training began, Carew placed long long-distance calls, reaffirming his affection. "It was nice before," says Marilynn, "but by now it was love, already." When the season started, they confronted her family at Passover Seder. Her nieces and nephews hung out a sign: GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER. When her mother saw Marilynn's engagement ring, she hugged Carew, cried and said: "Just take care of my baby."

Death Threats. They were married in October 1970, but not until Carew had received a number of death threats. Rod and Marilynn did not let the racism of the fans inhibit their lives, and, characteristically, they did not complain about the insults to Twins officials and teammates. (Carew had long before learned to live with prejudice. Even today, he sometimes hears a fan shouting racial slurs from the safety of the stands.) The Panamanian was swept into Marilynn's family--her mother has lived with them for four years. Marriage and children--Charryse, 3 1/2, and Stephanie, 2--have stabilized Carew's life. Although he remains an Episcopalian, he studies his wife's religion and observes Jewish traditions and holidays. His only jewelry, besides his wedding band and an ID bracelet, is a gold chain and chai, the Hebrew symbol for health. It was given to him in 1975 by his father-in-law shortly before his death.

Private Deeds. The Carews live modestly in the upper-middle-class suburb of Golden Valley; their indulgences are owning a Porsche and a Mercedes. A baby is due in November, but rather than move to a larger house (which they could easily afford), they have chosen to add on to their comfortable, unpretentious home. Says Marilynn: "I don't think that there is ever going to be a time when I'm not going to look for Hi-C fruit drink at 39-c- a can."

In summer, Carew putters in the yard. Come autumn, he cleans the rain gutters and in winter, the man from Panama shovels snow. Carew is rooted now, and the mercurial moods that marked his early career seldom surface. "When I ask Charryse what Daddy does, she says, 'Daddy strikes out. I explain to her that Daddy doesn't strike out very often. But how can you get mad at fans when your own kids knock you? I leave my game at the park. When I go home to play with my kids, they don't care if I went 0 for 4. They're happy to see me. In the end, it's your family that matters. They're there no matter what happens in a baseball game."

Carew has also settled into the Twin Cities. Last spring he won the Roberto Clemente Award, given annually to the major league player who has done distinguished community service. The honor is bestowed for a player's public acts--heading fund drives and the like. But private and unpublicized deeds most distinguish Carew's style. He regularly travels to the Mayo Clinic to visit patients. Once he had a run-in with a traffic cop who pointedly called him "boy" as he wrote up the ticket. The policeman later had the temerity to ask Carew to visit his father, who was dying of cancer. Carew went. After an emotional bedside scene with the son and father, Carew returned to tell his wife: "I guess this is how you change people, one at a time."

About the only thing that gnaws at Carew is his contractual problems with the tightfisted Twins. In 1975, the team turned down his request for a salary of $140,000 a year--modest by big league standards for a man of his skills--and the case went to arbitration. During the negotiations, Owner Griffith told the arbitrator that Carew was not worth a high salary because he was just a singles hitter. Never mind that he had hit .364; there were not enough home runs (3). The arbitrator naively accepted the club's reasoning and fixed Carew's salary at $120,000. The incident hurt Carew's pride more than his pocketbook, and the following season, he punched out 14 home runs just to show that he could reach the fences. This year he should drive in more than 100 runs, a singular feat for a hitter of singles. Carew also now leads the league in triples --with 14--and his slugging percentage of .619 is tops in the majors.*

It is doubtful that the Twins will decide to pay Carew what he is worth during the next contract talks after the 1978 season. Although he would prefer to play in Minneapolis, Carew is resigned to the possibility of ending up on another team. Salaries are a standard by which players are judged, and he wants the financial recognition, if not the bright lights that his status deserves. "I wouldn't want to go to New York. It's a zoo. If I move, I'd like to go to Seattle or Toronto, to new clubs that are building."

Rod Who? If he keeps up his current pace, plenty of teams will surely come bidding for Carew; his assault on the .400 mark is bringing him, at last, the attention he deserves. The family telephone number--unlisted to begin with--must be changed once a month. A persistent local reporter, not believing that Carew was away from his home, camped out on the doorstep until Marilynn called the police to drive him off. An ovation from home-town fans greets Carew's every trip to the plate. Photographers and reporters dog him at home and on the road. Still, he answers each letter personally, poses with young admirers and puts no secretary between himself and an increasingly demanding press and public. The wry sense of humor that carried him through the days of Rod Who? is serving him in good stead as the summer wears on and people on the street begin to recognize him --sort of. On a road trip to Chicago, a man mistook him for the former Bears halfback: "You're Gale Sayers, aren't you?" Came the response: "No, I'm Rod Carew. How could you make that mistake?" An embarrassed pause. Carew laughed: "I'm much better looking than Gale Sayers." "Oh!"

Oh to be Rod Carew in this fine summer. To be a hitter so confident that you turn down offers from teammates and coaches to steal signs and telegraph you the next pitch. "It doesn't matter what the pitch is--I'll get my cut at it." To know that if you do hit .400, the season of '77 will be remembered as the one that belonged to Rod Carew. And to know that, .400 season or not, your place in the history of your sport is already secure. "He doesn't have to prove anything," says Manager Mauch. "All he has to do is retire and wait for the Hall of Fame to call." Consider that.

* Computed by dividing the total number of bases accrued through hits by the number of times at bat.

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