Cubs’ Grace Is Amazing as a Hitter

Horatio Alger Jr. would have loved the first baseman of the Chicago Cubs.

Oh, I don’t know that the famous writer of boys’ books was much of a baseball fan. It wouldn’t have been the batting average, the play around the bag, the fact that he looked good in his red and blue uniform. It would have been the name.

You see, Alger’s heroes had names to fit--Dick Daring, Ronald Goodheart, Peter Pluck, that kind of thing. And the Cub first baseman’s name fits right in--Mark Grace. Perfect. The most felicitous blending of name and athlete since Ron Fairly.

It fits Grace because it’s not only a name, it’s a description. It’s how he plays the game--with grace. It’s how you would describe his style. He plays first base the way Rudolf Nureyev would play “Swan Lake” or Gene Kelly “An American in Paris.”

At bat, a picture swing is not always necessary. Great hitters do not always go by the book. Grace’s teammate, Andre Dawson, looks like a guy fighting off stomach cramps up there. Stan Musial coiled like a corkscrew. But Mark Grace looks like Page 3 of the hitters’ manual. The feet are spread and parallel. The head is steady, the bat ready. The shoulders are level. So is the swing. Even the great DiMaggio would approve.

He’s as taken for granted as sunup, as dependable as an English butler. He was one of three players--Cal Ripken Jr. and Cecil Fielder were the others--who played in every one of his club’s games last year. He had a consecutive-games streak of 240 going when he fouled a ball off his toe this season and missed three games.

“He’s the most underrated player in the game,” says his manager, Jim Lefebvre. “He does everything right. He doesn’t entirely need the bat. For every run he drives in, he saves two with his glove.”

Mark Grace is the type of hitter they might have nicknamed “Big Poison” in another era when that kind of thing was done. He does not hit a lot of home runs--but neither did the original Big Poison, Paul Waner. But neither is he a Punch-and-Judy hitter. He doesn’t slap at the ball, he drives it hard. He hit 28 doubles last year and 32 the year before that. He has 26 this year.

He has batted better than .300 two of the three years he has been in the big leagues and is batting .309 this season.

The mark of the hitter of late has been 200 hits in a season. Pete Rose popularized the statistic, but, in a way, it’s misleading. Ted Williams never had a 200-hit season. To get 200 hits, Mark Grace says, “you have to swing at a lot of bad balls, you have to hit balls that are out of the strike zone. I’m not good enough for that. I like to swing at strikes.”

In other words, hitting at balls in the dirt, over the head is just plain not Grace-ful.

Guys who get 200 hits frequently walk only 30 times a season. So they get on base 230 times. Mark Grace did that with only 169 hits last year. He got on base 242 times. He walked 70 of them.

And Mark Grace only hit into six double plays last season. It’s not a case of speed. He stole only three bases last season. It’s a case of not hitting the pitcher’s pitch.

“I think you have to be a selective hitter, particularly today,” he says. “They have a lot of these trick pitches--the forkball, the split-finger fastball, the knuckler, the palmball--that you will find end up out of the strike zone seven out of 10 times. So, the pitchers like you to be aggressive. They like for you to swing at a pitch as it leaves the strike zone.”

It’s interesting to note that, the year he hit .406, Ted Williams did not get 200 hits. He walked 145 times. The year Ruth hit 60 home runs, he did not get 200 hits. He walked 138 times. Henry Aaron never walked 100 times in a year in his life. Neither did Roberto Clemente. The modern hitter does not insist on a strike.

But Mark Grace does.

Another plus is, he doesn’t strike out that much--only 53 times last year, only 25 this year. That wouldn’t have been a good month for Reggie Jackson.

“I like to put the ball in play. Make them work to get an out,” Grace says. “A strikeout is a cheap out for them. They don’t have to catch a ball. They don’t have to throw a ball. They get it for nothing.

“A Tony Gwynn or a Wade Boggs might be able to go out there and hit that bad pitch safely somewhere,” he points out. But Mark Grace prefers to wait for something that says, “Hit me!”

No one in the National League is likely to get 200 hits this season--unless Gary Sheffield or Terry Pendleton has an out-of-body September. Through Wednesday, Mark Grace has 144 hits to go with his 63 walks--so, he already has his customary 200-times-on-base season.

The last time the Cubs were in the World Series, 1945, Harry Truman had just become President, the dollar was worth five times its face value in any capital in the world and you might have been driving a Studebaker or a De Soto. Almost every other club in the league has been in a Series since then.

Chicago is 8 1/2 games out, but if it can find a way to shed its Grace on the league, that’s not insurmountable. Hemingway said courage is grace under pressure, and Chicago’s Grace is just that. Under the pressure of the playoffs in 1989, Grace had a .647 batting average, 11 hits, a home run, three doubles and a triple and eight runs batted in. In five games.

Still, to win this year, the team will have to stay in its good Graces. In fact, it will need faith, hope and charity, as well. But if the Cubs win, and someone says, “My goodness gracious!” the Cub fan can paraphrase Mae West and say “Goodness had nothing to do with it--but Graciousness? Plenty!”