He’s Not Really Hot to Trot

The home run trot is a very personal, individual thing.

Some people want to get it over with as quickly as possible. Others want to savor it.

Pete Rose used to act as if he were ashamed of himself. He ran the fastest home runs in history. He streaked around the bases as if the sheriff were after him. It used to annoy teammate Frank Robinson, who hit 586 home runs in his career.

“Kid,” he advised, “you better leave those home runs to those of us who can act them out.”

Babe Ruth, who hit 714, could act them out. He chugged around the bases in these little mincing steps till he milked every last morsel of the crowd adulation. Babe was the Barrymore of the home run hitters.

Kal Daniels of the Dodgers is also a pretty fair thespian of this method theater. Kal is a pretty fast baserunner. He can get down to first in under four seconds in a pinch. But his home runs are three-act plays with prologues and curtain calls. He gets around the bases just faster than a guy laying brick.

The league expects it of Kal Daniels. They just catch up on a little sleep or light housekeeping or light reading when he goes into his home run--well, trot is not exactly the word for his home runs-- crawl would be more like it. He could swim faster.

But, when he dawdled around the bases against his old teammates, the Cincinnati Reds, the other night, after beating them with a 10th inning homer one night and belting an opposite-field homer the next, his former pals thought he was overdoing it just a trifle. In baseball, this is the cardinal sin. It’s known as “showing us up” in dugout parlance. Baseball’s sack dance.

The Reds thought that, for a man of Kal Daniels’ speed, to take 30 seconds to get around the bases was his form of thumbing his nose at them for trading him.

Daniels is outraged at the very idea.

“Did you have your coffee this morning?” he snapped at the interviewer who brought it up. “Those guys over there know how I run out my homers. I was over there for three years and I hit 52 of them. I run all my homers the same way--slow. I like to enjoy them. How long does it take me? I don’t know. I don’t wear a watch on the field.”

Kal Daniels doesn’t consider himself a home run hitter anyway--even though he has hit 64 in only a little more than 400 big league games and 1,369 at-bats. This is a homer nearly every 21 times at bat, which is not Ruth’s pace of a homer every 11.7 times at bat but compares favorably with Henry Aaron’s or Willie Mays’ mark of a homer every 16 at-bats.

“I hit the ball where it is pitched,” Kal growls. “If it goes out of the lot, fine. My job is to get hits, produce runs. I don’t try to hit home runs. I don’t even have a home run swing. I have this short, compact swing. I’m a line drive hitter.”

There are those in the game who consider Daniels the best striker of the ball in the league. Joe Amalfitano, coach of the Dodgers, who played or coached with them both, considers Daniels the best since Billy Williams, whose near-perfect batting style put him in the Hall of Fame.

“They both have a perfect understanding of the strike zone,” Amalfitano says. “I don’t think there’s a hitter in the game as selective as Kal Daniels. He’s selective but aggressive. He makes you pitch. Every at-bat is a war. I imagine the other Williams, Ted, was like this, too. He never gives in to the pitcher.”

His manager, Tommy Lasorda agrees.

“He’s the best-balanced hitter in the league,” Lasorda says. “He’s a very disciplined, very patient hitter. He’s never fooled on a pitch. He never loses the pitch, pulls his head off it. He’s the best pure hitter in the league.”

Does he study the pitchers? Kal Daniels is asked. He shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “Because what they throw to you is not what they’re throwing to other guys.”

Daniels is what is known as a “good-pitch hitter.” Lots of players in the league can hit mistakes. Daniels can hit mistakes, but he can also hit the pitches that the pitcher gets where he wants them.

Which is curious, because Daniels has never played in an All-Star game--not even the year he hit .334 with 26 home runs in Cincinnati. At Cincinnati, he was pretty much in the shadow of Eric Davis and Pete Rose.

He’s not playing in anyone’s shadow on the Dodgers. He’s their All-Star, to date, with his average of .312, 10 home runs and 31 runs batted in.

Kalvoski Daniels--he got his first name from the nurse who helped his mother in delivery--is the most dangerous hitter in the league when the wheels are on. But he has had arthroscopic surgery on his knees twice in three years, which is too bad because he was a baserunner who stole 43 bases in 122 games before his hinges began to give out.

Kal Daniels is as painstaking as Jack Nicklaus over a putt. Some batters go to the plate like a kid going to the woodshed. Daniels goes up like a guy getting ready to sing Carmen.

First, he steps in and keeps his back to the plate, while he carefully and meticulously scrapes himself a toehold in the box. He flexes the bat once or twice, adjusts his helmet and then, and only then, turns and locks himself in the cool, poised stance of a guy expecting a box of flowers.

He scrutinizes the pitches as carefully as a jeweler with a loupe. When he sees a strike, he strikes. He doesn’t like to be hurried. Particularly if he hits a home run. To Kal Daniels, home runs are like fine wines with gourmet meals. They shouldn’t be gulped.

Daniels’ home runs should have intermissions in them. But Kal feels the pitcher’s position should be clear. If they can’t stand the time, don’t commit the crime. If they can’t stand the trots, don’t throw the home runs.