Moneyball - Michael Lewis [86]
Boggs’s refusal to exhibit the necessary aggression led to his ostracism by the Red Sox. “They would get on him for taking a walk when there was a guy on second,” recalled Hatteberg. “They called him selfish for that.”
If Wade Boggs wasn’t allowed his patience, Hatteberg figured, he certainly wouldn’t be, either. When Hatteberg let a pitch go by for a strike—because it was a strike he couldn’t do much with—Red Sox managers would holler at him from the dugout. Coaches would try to tell him that he was hurting the team if he wasn’t more inclined to swing with men on base, or in 2–0 counts. The hitting coach, former Rex Sox slugger Jim Rice, rode Hatty long and hard. Rice called him out in the clubhouse, in front of his teammates, and ridiculed him for having a batting average in the .270s when he hit .500 when he swung at the first pitch. “Jim Rice hit like a genetic freak and he wanted everyone else to hit the way he did,” Hatteberg said. “He didn’t understand that the reason I hit .500 when I swung at the first pitch was that I only swung at first pitches that were too good not to swing at.” Hatty had a gift for tailoring the game to talents. It was completely ignored. The effect of Jim Rice on Scott Hatteberg was to convince him that “this is why poor hitters make the best hitting coaches. They don’t try to make you like them, because they sucked.”
Each time Scott Hatteberg came to bat for the Boston Red Sox he had, in effect, to take an intellectual stand against his own organization in order to do what was right for the team. Hitting, for him, was a considered act. He didn’t know how to hit without thinking about it, and so he kept right on thinking about it. In retrospect, this was a striking act of self-determination; at the time it just seemed like an unpleasant experience. Not once in his ten years with the Red Sox did anyone in Boston suggest there was anything of value in his approach to hitting—in working the count, narrowing the strike zone, drawing walks, getting on base, in not making outs. “Never,” he said. “No coach ever said anything. It was more, get up there and slug. Their philosophy was just to buy the best hitters money can buy, and set them loose.” The Red Sox couldn’t have cared less if he had waged some fierce battle at the plate. If he had, say, fought off the pitcher for eight straight pitches and lined out hard to center field. All that mattered was that he had made an out. At the same time, they praised him when he didn’t deserve it. “I’d have games when I’d have two hits and I didn’t take a good swing the whole game,” he said, “and it was like ��Great game, Hatty.’”
Pro ball never made the slightest attempt to encourage what he did best: take precise measurements of the strike zone and fit his talents to it. The Boston Red Sox were obsessed with outcomes; he with process. That’s what kept him sane. He didn’t think of it quite this way, but what he’d been trying to do all along was tame a chaotic experience with reason. To an astonishing degree, he had succeeded.
To the Oakland A’s front office, Hatteberg was a deeply satisfying scientific discovery. The things he did so peculiarly well at the plate were