Rocky Roll : Andres Galarraga of Colorado Takes a Different Stance as He Flirts With .400

As scrap-heap reclamation project Andres Galarraga dances with the magical .400 figure into the hot summer, the reasons he won’t bat .400 this season come as quickly as the mid-afternoon lightning that flashes from the Colorado sky.

Too much pitching, says Rockies’ coach Don Zimmer.

Too much defense, says fellow coach Ron Hassey.

Too much pressure, says Manager Don Baylor.

Good reasons all. But none of them is the real reason. The real reason Galarraga won’t become the first major league player to reach the mark since Ted Williams’ .406 in 1941 is this: calves.

Specifically, Galarraga’s calves, which are roughly the size of, well, calves. The moo kind.

Here’s cow, uh, how it works: The only other players to have made serious runs at .400 seasons in the last 20 years have been Rod Carew and George Brett, both of whom have regular-sized legs and decent speed, and were capable, during their peak seasons, of beating out infield choppers and bunts.

Galarraga, who has been clocked in Is he here yet? in the 40-yard dash, isn’t going to beat out anything.

But he seldom hits an infield chopper anyway, and the thought of Galarraga bunting for a base hit is akin to waiting around for a whale to figure skate.

So what we have in Andres Galarraga is a 6-foot-3, 245-pound monster who takes great, whooshing cuts at the ball, seeming not to just want to hit it but to crack it open. When his average soared to .435 in mid-June, the major leagues gasped. In addition to the average, Galarraga was pounding the ball with power, crashing doubles all over the place and home runs that rattled the seats.

All of this from a guy who was branded a has-been by nearly everyone who knew a fungo from a fungus. In 1991, his seventh season with the Montreal Expos, he simply came apart at his large seams. His batting average fell to .219. The crack of the bat was replaced by the thud of the ball hitting the catcher’s mitt, and he struck out 86 times in 375 at-bats.

Traded after the season to the St. Louis Cardinals, Galarraga’s slide became a free fall. Through July 19 of last season, he was dragging around a .189 average and a head filled with doubt.

Baylor, then the Cardinals’ hitting coach, said it was a case of the doubts.

“He was as low as you can go,” Baylor said. “Everyone talked about how he had lost it, that all his skills were gone, and after a while he believed it.”

The start of the skid can be traced to 1989, when then-Montreal and current Angel Manager Buck Rodgers began changing Galarraga’s swing, a swing that had brought Galarraga a .305 average in 1987 and a .302 average in 1988, along with a start in the 1988 All-Star game.

Get your hands lower and pull everything, Galarraga was instructed. Yank everything down the left-field line. And the big man from Venezuela did as he was told, gradually changing his approach to hitting. His average fell to .257 in 1989 and to .256 in 1990. Admittedly confused at the plate by then, Galarraga toppled to .219 the next season and the same Expo team that had created this pull-hitting disaster traded him.

In St. Louis, Baylor went to work with Galarraga. At its low point, Galarraga’s career was reduced to having Baylor tossing baseballs at him underhand and hitting the ball off of a tee. “It was embarrassing,” said Galarraga. “It was humiliating.”

It was, as Baylor calls it, Baseball 101. Slowly, though, Galarraga began finding pieces of his old swing. Slowly, he began hitting the ball to right field and center field, as he had in his successful seasons.

And then he made the biggest change.

Baylor instructed Galarraga to open his stance, turning his left foot so far away from the plate that it nearly pointed to the third-base dugout.

“I didn’t think he was seeing the ball from his usual closed stance,” Baylor said. “As soon as he opened it up, he started seeing the ball.”

In the first few days with the new stance, Galarraga felt awkward.

When he began to feel comfortable with the new stance and the old swing, two years of frustration and doubt turned to fire. After July 19, he got hits in nine of the Cardinals’ next 10 games, batting .425 during that stretch with three homers and eight runs batted in. He hit .301 in the final 45 games.

But, after the season, the Cardinals refused to pick up his $3-million option.

Then, Baylor was named manager of the Colorado expansion team and the Rockies quickly signed Galarraga to a one-year, $600,000 contract with incentives that could double it.

Suddenly, there is a Big Cat--a nickname earned for his defensive grace--roaming the Rocky Mountains with a big smile on his face.

“I thought maybe I could come back to .300 this year,” said Galarraga, 32. “I remembered when I was hitting .300 and it seemed like I was getting two hits every game. Four-hundred seems like a hit every time up. Like they can never get me out.”

When he was named to the National League All-Star team last week, he got the news while he was taking batting practice at Mile High Stadium before a game against the Florida Marlins.

“During the bad times of the last two seasons, I never thought I’d be back with those guys,” he said of the All-Star lineup. “I guess I felt my time had passed by. I knew I could still hit, but I thought my chance at All-Star games was gone. I can’t describe the feeling I have now, to have come this far.”

Baseball, which isn’t noted for Renaissance thinking, predicted the demise of Galarraga two years ago. The naysayers were wrong. But now they have something new to doubt: Galarraga’s chances of hitting .400 for the season.

“You can’t say it’s impossible, but it almost is,” said Zimmer, who has watched Wade Boggs and Carew and Brett come close, then fall short.

“Besides the pitching and defenses we face now, Andres just isn’t the type of guy to do it. You gotta have those cheap hits, those infield hits, those bunts. This guy just pounds the ball.”

Hassey said Galarraga has been so consistent this season that he might have a chance, then adds, “But .400 is really bizarre. I can’t imagine anyone doing it.”

Even Baylor, who helped create this new monster, scoffs.

“I think Ted (Williams) is safe,” he said. “Batting .400? I’ll take .300 from the guy.”

Marlin knuckleballer Charlie Hough, who seemingly has pitched to everyone since Williams, puts a darker spin on the issue.

“He won’t do it,” Hough said. “Absolutely impossible. I know he’s having a spectacular season, but there’s no way the man will hit .400. Things happen. Pitchers will find a weak spot. More and more, they’ll start pitching around him, giving him nothing . . . and he doesn’t like to walk so he’ll take some swings at it. And then there’s the pressure he’ll face if he’s near .400 down the stretch. “It will not happen. Not a chance.”

So far, the predictions seem to be coming true. Since his high of .435 on June 15, Galarraga’s average has fallen to .395.

Galarraga said the slump has been caused by a sore hamstring that kept him out of 17 games this season. It is feeling better, he said.

“When it’s back to normal, I’ll get the hits again,” he said. “Everyone says .400 can’t be done. They say I can’t do it. I’ve heard that before.

“They say I can’t get the little hits, that I can’t run fast enough, that my legs are gone and my legs are this or that. Me, I think I can do it.”