There's a deep fly ball... Winfield goes back, back... his head hits the wall ... it's rolling towards second base.
All the Padres need is a fly ball in the air.
I'm a fly-ball pitcher, guys.
To me, hitting the ball in the air means hitting a line drive, and I hit far more balls in the air.
I wouldn't describe myself as a home run hitter. I'm just trying to hit the ball hard in the gaps. Just backspinning baseballs and hitting line drives.
The key to hitting for high average is to relax, concentrate, and don't hit the fly ball to center field.
The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
If you hit a routine fly ball in the big leagues, you're out every time. If you hit a ground ball, you're probably out a lot of the time as well. But there's a happy medium in there, a way to swing where your misses can still lead to successes.
In college and high school, you're always taught to hit the ball on the ground and on a line.
The fall of 1912 my fielding was above the average, but my hitting was not so good. However, I was the talk of the town because of my peculiar way of catching a fly ball. They later named it the Vest-Pocket Catch.
Pop flies, in a sense, are just a diversion for a second baseman. Grounders are his stock trade.
