I remember watching you when I was in high school and how they always talked about the strength of your forearms and your bat speed. I also remember an “urban legend” that you could break a bat at the handle just by swinging and flicking your wrists. Any truth to that?
Tom F.
Tyngsboro, MA

I did it twice in games. On two separate occasions I broke bats without ever making contact with the pitch and both were check swings. I think one was in Oakland and a curveball started out high and I committed to swing, but when it broke downward on me and I tried to stop my swing I was left just holding the bat handle in my hands. Tony Armas also did it once when he was with the Red Sox.

Any strength I had was probably hereditary because my dad was a strong guy. I never lifted weights when I was growing up, nor was I encouraged or allowed to. I built strength just by playing a lot of sports. In high school I played football, baseball, basketball, and ran track. Back then, we didn’t have weights in high school. Come to thing of it, they didn’t have them in the minors or majors either.

To prepare for games, the team would perform calisthenics and wind sprints before we started throwing the ball and trying to get loose. We had one trainer, not the team of strength, conditioning, and nutrition experts that teams have today. Our trainer had some workouts for us but most of it was related to baseball. The guys who had power that I played with, like Yaz and Rico, didn’t lift weights.

You look around the baseball locker room these days, and these guys aren’t in baseball shape. You’re playing with a 5 oz ball and a 32 ounce bat. There’s no need to lift 350 lbs. That’s not baseball muscle, that’s muscle so that the players can fill out their jerseys.

Because of this obsession with strength training, you see more injuries in the last 10 years than you saw in 10-15 years prior to that. Could you see Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb jumping hurdles in spring training? They didn’t get hurt back then and they were some pretty good ball players.