A Slimmer and Trimmer George Brett Will Report in Top Shape

“I should be in the prime of my career. I’m in my early 30s. I signed a long contract and I want to honor it, both mentally and physically. This is the best I’ve felt in a long time.”

--GEORGE BRETT, Kansas City Royals The only thing the American League will find familiar with George Brett of the Kansas City Royals this summer is his menacing bat.

Brett has been one of the most productive hitters in the American League over his 11-year career, winning two batting titles and fashioning a .314 lifetime average. That doesn’t figure to change: at 31 years of age, Brett still has one of the most feared batting eyes since Ted Williams.

But Brett has come to the realization that his batting eye doesn’t do himself or the Royals much good from the bench. Since 1976 when he won his first batting crown, Brett has not had an injury-free season.

The nine-time All-Star third baseman has missed 239 games with injuries over the last eight seasons, including 44 in 1980 when he staged his dramatic chase of .400. He had always been able to fight through those injuries in past years to finish with a batting average above .300. But not in 1984.

Brett missed 56 games last summer with a variety of injuries and, even when he was in the lineup, he was bothered at times by a congenital back problem. The Royals had given him a lifetime contract last May and wanted to make sure Brett was taking that commitment as seriously as they were.

So club officials summoned him in late August for a heart-to-heart chat about his conditioning program. They pointed out that the game is not as easy for a 31-year-old as it is for a 21-year-old and strongly suggested to Brett that he start taking better care of himself.

“We told George we felt it was time--at his age, at this point in his career and with his importance to the club--to start making a serious and genuine effort to get himself and keep himself in the best possible condition,” Royals General Manager John Schuerholz said. “The club committed a lifetime contract to him and we asked him to make a dedicated effort to get and stay in his best physical condition for the life of that contract. He didn’t look in his best shape last year. He looked heavy.”

Brett not only looked heavy. He was heavy.

While the Royals were making their stretch run for the American League West championship last September, Brett was making a stretch walk. He had torn a hamstring in August that knocked him out of the lineup for two weeks and when he did return, he still couldn’t run. But the Royals needed his bat.

“I knew I was heavy at the end of the season,” Brett said. “I couldn’t run because of the hamstring and I probably put on five or six pounds. I might have gotten up to 210. I don’t know. I didn’t weigh myself. I didn’t want to; I thought I’d be depressed by it (his weight).”

The Royals lost the league championship series to the Detroit Tigers and Brett spent the rest of October on the banquet circuit. He went to Wichita for a golf tournament and followed that up with four days at Hilton Head and three days in Chicago. The food and drink translated into additional poundage: he ballooned to 214.

Brett had not forgotten his late-season meeting with club officials. Quite to the contrary; he agreed with what they had to say and vowed to do something about it. And he has, as the American League will find out this summer. Pitchers may recognize his bat come April but they won’t recognize his body.

When Brett returned to his off-season home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., in November, he began a daily workout program. He hired an old high-school buddy, Bob Lowe, to supervise the workouts and also altered his diet, substituting diet soft drinks for alcohol and eating only one solid meal a day, cutting out red meat in favor of fish and salads.

The fitness program devised by Brett and Royals trainer Mickey Cobb and supervised by Lowe had the third baseman playing 1 1/2 hours of racquetball every other day and running for distance on the off days. He also played golf daily and worked on the Nautilus machine on days he played racquetball.

“I lost 19 pounds in the month of November,” Brett said. “I was 214 on Nov. 1 and 195 on Dec. 1. The first day I started to work out, I went over to the College of the Desert, ran a mile and I was dead. Now I run five miles a day.

“When I came back (to Kansas City in December) I told Mickey Cobb I wanted to play at 190. He told me I was crazy. He said 1980 was my best year ever and I played at 200 on the nose. He said in 1976 I played at 200 on the nose. He asked me, ‘What do you want to get so skinny for?’ It had become an obsession with me. I got down to 193 at one point but the lower I got, the weaker I began feeling.”

Brett had three separate running programs. Some days he would run 5.2 miles in 40 minutes. Other days he would run two miles plus 10 sprints up a nearby hill -- a program similar to one used by former Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Allen to strengthen his legs during his days at Southern Cal. Other days Brett would run between 2-3 miles and then 10 100-yard sprints.

Cobb put Brett through a battery of tests in December and the results were encouraging. His leg were stronger than they had ever been and his body had never been any more flexible. He reduced his body fat from 10.1 to 7.9 percent and also took a notch off his belt, going from a 36- to a 34-inch waist. He will go to spring training in the best shape of his professional life.

The new flexibility should allow Brett to avoid some injuries and the new muscle tone should allow him to return quicker from others.

“I’d always think, ‘I’m so young that it’ll only take me two weeks to get in shape,”’ Brett said. “But I’m not young any more. Mickey Cobb, Mr. Fogelman (club co-owner Avron) and even guys from other teams were telling me I had to start taking better care of myself.

“Reggie Jackson came up to me the last time the Angels were here (in September) and told me that because I got hurt so much and because I wasn’t a kid any more, I ought to start working out on a regular basis. I talked to Carl Yastrzemski a year or two earlier and he said basically the same thing; he said he had to work harder every year to compete with the kids. It was starting to sink in.

“I should be in the prime of my career. I’m in my early 30s. I signed a long contract and I want to honor it, both mentally and physically. This is the best I’ve felt in a long time. The commitment has paid off. It was a lot of fun to see the progress. The thing that makes it exciting is the (muscle) definition in my arms, my stomach, my legs. It’s not important what I weigh; the main thing is to go to spring training healthy, in shape and flexible.”

A rejuvenated body has stoked Brett’s enthusiasm for the game. He will report to spring training at 200 pounds instead of spending all of March trying to get there. He says he has not been this excited about reporting to Florida since 1981 when he was coming off his summer-long chase of .400.

How excited is he? Brett doesn’t have to report until Feb. 28 but he plans to be in uniform the 25th--and he’s going to cut short a trip to Europe to do so. He was scheduled to appear at an international sporting goods show on behalf of a shoe company in Munich, Germany Feb. 19.

“People say, ‘As long as you’re over there, go to Portugal. Go to Spain. Go see London. You don’t have to report (to spring training) until the 28th,”’ Brett said. “But I’m going to be flying from Germany to Paris on the 22nd. I’m going to stay over in Paris that night and then fly a Concorde to New York on the 23rd. Then I’m going to grab a flight to Atlanta the 23rd and then hop a flight to Fort Myers that same day.

“I’m going to lay on the beach all day the 24th and then be on the field the first thing the 25th. I’m always one of the first position players to report but, this year especially, I want to get down to Florida and start throwing the ball around.”

Brett would like to erase 1984 from his memory as soon as possible. The Royals did win the American League West but Brett did not feel he contributed his fair share.

Injuries were a part of it. Brett had a knee operation at the end of spring training that kept him out of the first six weeks of the season. Then he tore the hamstring. But he was as displeased with his summer on the field as he was his summer off it.

Brett batted only .284 with 13 homers and 69 RBI in 104 games and by the end of the season, he had evolved into a seven-inning ball player. If the Royals held a late-inning lead, Manager Dick Howser would insert Greg Pryor at third base for Brett to rest his hamstring and his back.

“I got into a rut,” Brett said. “I missed the first six weeks and when I got back, I started pressing to make up for the lost time. We were in sixth place in a seven-team division. I tried to do too much and wound up not helping the team as much as I possibly could have.

“I hit 105 points less than what I hit five years ago (.390) -- that’s like a .300 hitter hitting .195. If you hit .300 you help your club win ball games. I’m in my 11th year; if I’m not hitting .300, I don’t feel I’m helping the ball club. And if I’m sitting on the bench (injured), I’m not helping the ball club.

“That last month of the season ... it was embarrassing the way they would take me out (because of the injuries). They didn’t feel I had the range defensively; that’s the way I intrepreted it. They wanted my bat in the lineup but not my glove. If I got an at-bat in the sixth inning and we were winning, I was gone. It hurt a little bit. I don’t want to be put in that position again. I like Greg and I think Dick is a great manager . . . but I don’t ever want to be a seven-inning ball player again.”