A CONVERSATION WITH TWO OF BASEBALL’S BEST HITTERS : When Your’re in the Groove, Just Enjoy It

For the first time, Tony Gwynn was seeing Don Mattingly in street clothes.

“God, he’s short,” Gwynn must have thought. “He’s as short as me.”

But neither is short on talent, and that’s why The Times asked Gwynn and Mattingly to get together last weekend in San Diego and talk baseball.

Mattingly, the 1986 American League MVP as the New York Yankees’ first baseman, was in town promoting AcuVision, a mechanical device he used last season to help his peripheral vision and hand-eye coordination. He began using it about mid-season and went on a tear, finishing the season with a career-high .352 batting average.

“Yeah, I hit .352 last year, but who’s gonna say if that (AcuVision) was why. If you’re hitting, you’re hitting. If you’re hot, you’re hot. You don’t know why, you don’t know when.”

Gwynn, the San Diego Padres’ right fielder and the 1984 National League batting champ, happily agreed to sit down with Mattingly. It was arranged that they’d meet at a San Diego hotel, and Gwynn showed up wearing a warmup suit and high top sneakers.

An edited version follows . . .

Mattingly: You wanna try this AcuVision, Tony?

Gwynn: No (laughing).

Mattingly: It didn’t do anything but help me. It’s not gonna make my eyes worse, it’ll make them better. Most hitters you talk to, when they’re hitting well, they say, ‘I’m seeing the ball good. I’m seeing the spin, picking the ball up right away.’

Times: You guys ever met each other before?

Gwynn: Yeah, we’ve talked on the field every year at the all-star game, the last three years. But he’s had better success there than I’ve had.

Mattingly: I haven’t had any success there.

Gwynn: I’m 1 for 8 or something.

Mattingly: I’m 0-for-5. Every time they put me in, Fernando (Valenzuela) is pitching, and he strikes out five straight batters every time. And I’m like the first guy every time. I get him rolling.

Gwynn: I just haven’t had any success. And most of the time, I see guys I’ve seen in spring training too. Like last year, I saw (Milwaukee’s Ted) Higuera. I had two at-bats off Higuera in spring training, and hit him well. But he dropped that hammer on me (in the all-star game) and it was all over.

Mattingly: Teddy, he’ll get you out. In Milwaukee, during day games, you don’t see very good at all, and he gets me out easy there. And then when I get back to New York, I’m waiting for him. You know, it’s night-time, and I see him good, and I’m gonna smoke him. First time up, I’ll hit a seed off a curveball. Next time up, I hit a seed off a breaking ball. Then, late in the game, we got men on base and we need a run, and he’s throwing harder that time than he threw earlier in the game.

Gwynn: I’m the same way with (Dwight) Gooden. I don’t hit him well in New York, but when we get him here, I’m gonna see the ball better. He’s throwing the same stuff, but you see it better and the results are better. I’d much rather face a tough guy at home than at a place like L. A. or New York, where I don’t see the ball too well.

Mattingly: Like me in Milwaukee. There’s no background. A day game in Milwaukee is like you’re looking at the pitcher and all you see is sky. The bleachers are like football bleachers, and they go about 10 rows up. There’s nothing else out there, and I’m going, ‘Just give me something to look at. Give me a tree or something or anything.’ So I know I’m struggling when I go to Milwaukee every year.

Gwynn: I have a lot of places like that, where it’s tough to see the ball. Like Houston. You saw it at the all-star game, Don. The turf is bad; the backgrounds are bad. They’re trying to improve it, but Houston’s pitching, with guys like (Mike) Scott, doesn’t make it any easier.

Q: Tony, you don’t get real technical with your hitting, do you?

Gwynn: I try not to. But the majority of the time, you don’t even think about it when you’re hitting the ball good. You’re seeing it good, you’re hitting it good, you don’t think about it. But when you start to scuffle a bit, that’s when you start wondering if your hips and hands are working, if your stride is too long or too short, if your hands are in the right spot . . . I look at tape. I’m a tape addict. I tape every at-bat I can have taped. And I look at every swing. And even when I’m going good, I like to see every swing, because you want to get into a repetition at the plate.

Mattingly: I’m a slow starter, too. Maybe I’m hitting .290 or .300 early in the year, but I’m doing it real weak. Scuffling and getting a hit. Scuffling and getting a hit.

Gwynn (laughing): Early in the year, I’m scuffling. I’m asking myself, ‘Were these years before a fluke or what? What’s going on?’

Mattingly: You always know you’ll come out of it. To me, when I struggle is when I’m going up to the plate and, like you said before, a lot of people are talking to you and you’re listening to even the bullpen coach who’s telling you what you’re doing wrong. But the key, to me, is when I get to the point where I say, ‘I don’t care if I get another hit the rest of the year, but I’m going to hit every ball hard. If I go 0-for-5, I don’t care’ . . . Then, all of a sudden, you’re getting three (hits), you’re getting three more, you’re getting four more, you’re getting a dinger, you’re getting three more and you start rolling.

Gwynn (laughing): It never goes like that for me! You know, I played winter ball against you in Puerto Rico, and when I saw you then, I thought you were a similar type hitter to what I was. You were inside-out. Everything to left. And then you go to the big leagues the next year and start turning on stuff. And I watch you a lot, because I have a (satellite) dish at home and I watch the Yankees and the Red Sox and the Rangers.

Mattingly: That year we played in Puerto Rico together? Well, I still feel like I’m a spray hitter. But now, I’m hitting more and more with power. And, even then (1983) in Puerto Rico, it was a gradual change. I never hit over 10 home runs in the minor leagues anywhere. That year, I think I hit four in the major leagues, four in winter ball and eight in the minor leagues. So we’re talking sixteen that year. And that year, I was just learning how to pull the ball. . . . My biggest problem, I thought, when I came to the major leagues was the slow stuff. Just slow, slow curve balls and the change up. I started out (my career) looking all fastball, saying, ‘I gotta look fastball and adjust.’ But, I’ve got to the point with these guys, where I’m saying, ‘I’m just gonna sit on a changeup all night long.’I started looking slow and adjusting fast, and I never thought I could do that until the last couple years.

Gwynn: When you started looking slow and adjusting fast, if they threw you the fastball, where did you hit it?

Mattingly: A lot of times, it seems like I pulled the fastball. I’m looking change, change, but get a fastball and the ball’s on the inside half of the plate or an inch inside and you hit it to left center and that guy is (peeved) and he’s screaming at you down the line.

Gwynn: That’s my bread and butter, right there. See, in our league, we don’t have many junk ballers. We’ve got the Rick Mahlers and a guy like Danny Cox, who can throw a fastball, but he likes to throw a change up and a curve ball. . . . I always thought that you looked for the fastball and adjusted on anything else. But, there are certain pitchers in the league, that you can tell yourself, ‘He’s been getting me out with the off-speed stuff so think slow.’ The thing I couldn’t do, though, is I couldn’t hit the fastball fair thinking that way. I’d always foul it off or get a piece of it. . . . But early this year, I got a lot of home runs hitting the changeup and the breaking ball.

Mattingly: How many home runs did you hit (last) year?

Gwynn: Fourteen.

Mattingly: Is that the most you’ve hit?

Gwynn (laughing): That’s a monumental year for me! I hope that’s a trend. I hope it continues. But, on our club, they don’t need me to hit home runs. I mean, I like to hit home runs, but my job is to get on base and score runs.

Mattingly: Right, it depends where you’re playing and what they want you to do.

Gwynn: If we get Tim Raines, though, that might change (laughing) a little bit. I’m perfectly comfortable as it is. I enjoy it myself. I like getting on base and trying to steal.

Mattingly: You’re a different player than me. You’ll steal a base and make things happen.

Gwynn: I was talking to Garry Templeton about coming down here to talk with you, and we were saying ‘If Don Mattingly could run, he’d be probably the greatest Yankee of all time.’

Mattingly: If only I could run.

Gwynn: But, Don Mattingly, he does so many other things, you know. He’s won a couple gold gloves, led the league in hits, scores a lot of runs. . . . I’m really impressed. I sit at home during the season, and I watch a lot of baseball games.

Mattingly: If I was watching a San Diego game, I’d watch Tony. I love watching Tony hit. . . . When I first saw Tony in Puerto Rico, I thought he’d hit a lot of home runs.

Gwynn: Everybody did. I guess because of my size. I’ve got thick legs, and they think I can hit a lot of home runs. But, until a couple years ago, I’ve always been inside-out. I take that inside pitch a half inch off the inside corner of the plate and just fight it off and hit a little duck tail down the left field line. But I’m getting quicker on that inside fastball. Mattingly: You’re probably getting to the point where, in certain situations, you’re not afraid to look for the long ball, too. You get up and there’re two outs in the ninth . . .

Gwynn: Yeah, I’ve done that a couple times.

Mattingly: I saw you do it to (the Mets’ Jesse) Orosco. You got to. Why not? If Tony comes up with two outs in the ninth inning and it’s a tie ball game, what good is it gonna do if he walks? I guess it does him more good than me, because Tony can get on and steal a base and a base hit scores him. But, for me, it’s ridiculous to go up there and try to get a walk with two out in the ninth when there has to be two more base hits to score me. Tony has a chance to steal a bag and score on one base hit. But, for me, I’m trying to end that thing right there.

Q: Doesn’t it hurt your average?

Mattingly: I’ll look in a zone that whole at-bat. Maybe I do get a fastball on the outside half of the plate that I think I can hit to left field somewhere hard. But I may give that up and say, ‘This guy might make a mistake on the inside half of the plate.’

Q: Isn’t a good at-bat in the eye of the beholder?

Mattingly: It really is. A good at-bat doesn’t necessarily mean a base hit. There have been a lot of nights where I’ve gone 1-for-5 and felt pretty good about the night. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll say, ‘I was 1-for-5. I lined out to short and hit a seed to right center. The guy made a good play on me.’

If I go up against anybody and I hit five seeds right at somebody and go 0-for-5 and he pitches a shutout, well, he knows.

Gwynn: That’s right. I think a lot of times when that happens, you see a difference the next time you face him. Pitchers are like hitters. They remember.

Q: Don, can you give Tony a preview of Matt Young, (a left-hander the Dodgers acquired from Seattle)?

Mattingly: He’s pretty nasty there, Tony.

Gwynn: I’ve seen him, spring training.

Mattingly: He wore me out until this year. He still gets me out, but I feel more offensive against him. Some guys, you feel defensive against. Especially left-handers.

Gwynn: I tell you, Matt Young is one guy I never felt defensive against. He’s got good stuff, but the thing I found with him, he likes to get people out with the breaking ball. Two years ago, I hit him good in spring training. He’d get ahead of me with fastballs and try to get me out with the breaking ball. And unless it’s a good breaking ball, he’d get it up or hang it, and that’s what the hitter wants to hit. And I’ve got the feeling, now that he’s coming to the National League, he’s not going to throw the breaking ball quite as much as he did in the American League. He’ll try to run that fastball in. And, as a left-handed hitter, the one thing that crosses my mind when I go to the plate is does he have the good fastball that rides in at the batter’s hands? Because I don’t want to hit that pitch. I want to hit something out over the plate. And, in our league, guys like (St. Louis’ John) Tudor, (Houston’s Bob) Knepper, Fernando, (the Dodgers’ Rick) Honeycutt, Orosco. . . . They try to run that fastball in on your hands, and if you bite after it, they’re gonna keep throwing it. And the only one who might differ out of those five is Fernando. He might throw it again or he might not.

Q: Fernando throws you screwballs, right?

Gwynn: This year was the first time he ever threw me a screwball.

Mattingly: He threw me some in the all-star game. He’s the first guy I’ve ever seen try to throw a backdoor screwball. It’s like a slider. The (bleeping) ball goes down. . . . It’s unbelievable.

Gwynn (laughing): He’s a great pitcher. I give Fernando a lot of credit.

Mattingly: To me, in my three at-bats against him, he pitched backwards. He threw me hard stuff, a fastball early in the count. And then he threw breaking balls after that. In the all-star game of ‘85, it was fastball first pitch, breaking ball second. This year, he starts me with a breaking ball and then goes to the fastball. He’s always changing.

Q: Tony, you won a game with a homer against Fernando. . . . You said it was one of the greatest moments of your career.

Gwynn: Yeah. It was really the first ball I’d ever hit off Fernando. He’d owned me for I don’t know how many years. And the first time up, he threw a fastball, and I didn’t see another fastball. And I’m going into my last at bat in the top of the ninth (with the score 0-0) and I said, ‘He’s gonna try to sneak some cheese by me, I know it.’ And he did. I was sitting on the inner half (of the plate). I hit a home run, and as I was running around the bases, I just wanted to do somersaults around the bases and jump in the air. But I said I better not do that, I gotta face him later on down the line. To me, that was one of my biggest hits ever. It was just a mental thing.

Hitting that home run gave me a lot of confidence off him. And him being in our division, we see him an awful lot. Every time I see him, he says, ‘No mo’ fastball inside, man.’ And last year, he started throwing me the screwball. He’d get ahead and throw me the screwball. It took me half a season to recognize it. I’d never seen it.

Q: The American League seems so different, the higher averages, more home runs. . . . Why?

Mattingly: I think the ballparks have something to do with it. The National League parks seem to be more the same, really. A lot of turf fields, big ballparks. But I like the American League. It’s got a lot of charm and character. You go into Fenway and it’s great. There’s 30,000 seats and you’ve got the wall and it’s an odd-shaped park. You can’t really explain to people what it’s like playing there because the fans are right on top of you. Comiskey (Park in Chicago) was the same way, though that’s going to be out soon. Our park is a great place to play. Detroit . . . Tony you played there, that’s a band box. The place is rocking and it’s old and you just feel it, man.

Like our place. Mantle’s been there and DiMaggio and Gehrig and, God, Munson. Everybody, you know.

Q: There’s only one old park in the National League . . .

Gwynn: Wrigley Field.

Mattingly: Baseball’s baseball I guess.

Gwynn: Everybody talks about the difference in pitching (between the two leagues). But we’ve played spring training games against Seattle and Cleveland, and I don’t really notice a lot of breaking balls. You still see your number of fastballs. But the biggest thing is when they throw them. In the National League, a guy gets behind, he’s coming in with gas. He’ll challenge you with his best pitch and try to get you out.

In the American League, you know, they’re down 2 and 0, they might throw you a change up for a strike or a curve ball. That’s the biggest thing, I think. We’ve got more guys who believe in challenging the hitters. At 2 and 0, they won’t throw a changeup and give the hitter the advantage.

Mattingly: A lot of times, I might get ahead two balls and no strikes, and the guy almost knows you’re not going to swing at a breaking ball. I’m not swinging at a breaking ball too often. Not really. If a guy throws me a curveball, I’m gonna say, ‘Take it, you can have it.’ But like you were saying, a guy’s gonna come with his best pitch. Well, his best pitch might be his breaking ball, right?

(Minnesota’s Bert) Blyleven ain’t going to throw you no fastball 2 and 0. Last year, this guy had some of the nastiest stuff a couple times. The first time I saw him, I thought he was the nastiest guy I’d ever seen. He threw hard. You always heard about his breaking ball, but this guy throws hard, man. This guy was throwing the cheese right at me.

This guy had a good breaking ball, but now he’s got kind of a slurve, curve ball and he’s got a changeup. So this guy’s throwing me stuff at 2 and 0. What’s his best pitch? Curveball? Slider? Fastball? Who knows? He knows.

Gwynn: Tudor’s like that, too.

Mattingly: (The Mets’ Bob) Ojeda’s gotta be like that. His best pitch is his changeup.

Gwynn: I only faced him (Ojeda) once last year, and it was a comfortable 1-for-4. I hit the ball hard off him. We only saw Ojeda one time, and all of us were saying we hope we get to face him again. He won 3-2 that day, but he got away with a lot of changeups that were up in the zone.

Q: But look what he did to the Red Sox in the World Series. . . . Surprised?

Gwynn: Yeah. Kind of.

Mattingly: I always thought he had good stuff, but he gets away with some pitches. His changeup has the same motion (as his fastball). Tudor is similar. But I liked hitting a little better off Tudor than I did Ojeda. I don’t know why. Tudor just showed me the ball better.

Gwynn: I never see the ball off Tudor. I’ve hit the ball good off him. I’ve hit two home runs off him, but those are the only balls I’ve hit hard.

Q: Look out that window . . . What a view.

Gwynn: It is great. Don, you want to come live out here?

Mattingly: You guys already got a first baseman, don’t you?

Q: Yeah, five. Let’s see, Garvey, Martinez, Kruk . . .

Gwynn: Well, I’ve been trying to get guys to come out here for the last three years.

Mattingly: That’s the way I am. I was telling (Kirk) Gibson last year, ‘New York, it’s a nice place to play man. C’mon Kirk.’ Free agency came along and said, ‘No, no Kirk. You ain’t going nowhere.’

Gwynn: That’s what I’m doing with (the Expos’ Tim) Raines. I’ve been trying to butter him up for the last two years. His wife and my wife get along real good. He told me at the beginning of the season, ‘I ain’t signing with Montreal, and I’d love to play at Diego.’ I said: ‘We’d love to have you!’ Well, we might have a crack at it.

Mattingly: How ‘bout us? Him and Rickey (Henderson) back-to-back, you might see some explosions.

Gwynn: Wouldn’t you love hitting behind those two?

Mattingly: I haven’t seen Raines play that much, but--for my money--Rickey does as much as anybody in the game. He does so many things. He’s amazing. When Rickey has concentration, man, he’s unbelievable. He changes a whole game. I’m sure Raines is the same, but Rickey gets on, and the pitcher throws over seven times, and he steals second. And they throw over three times to second and he steals third. And he’s on third with one out all the time.

Mattingly: Well, Tony, you gonna get on this AcuVision machine or what?

Gwynn: OK.

Q: I’ve got an AcuVision brochure you can look at, Tony. Don’s photo is inside.

Mattingly: Just what you need, Tony. A picture of me . . .

Gwynn: Gonna autograph it for me?

Mattingly: No, but are you gonna bring me one of your bats? I’ll put it in my restaurant, on my Wall of Shame. I’ve got a bunch of batting champions’ bats . . .

Gwynn: OK, you got it.