Hot Toddy : Mets’ Hundley Is Closing In on Record for Home Runs by Catcher

He broke his left hand in a collision at home plate in 1994 and broke his left wrist in another last year.

“There’s so much arthritis in there already that I know I’ll probably lose the use of it at some point in the future,” Todd Hundley said.

“It hurts like hell almost every day, but that’s the way it is as a catcher. My dad gave his body to the game. I’m going to lose my wrist to it.

“It’s like football. If a catcher comes out with everything he came in with, he has to be very lucky.”

Hundley will give more than his wrist to the game. His bat should soon be going to the Hall of Fame.

With 39 homers, the New York Met catcher is one shy of Roy Campanella’s major league record for the position, set in 1953.

Johnny Bench hit 45 in 1970, but only 38 as a catcher.

Hundley’s improbable assault has also enabled him to break Howard Johnson’s National League record for home runs by a switch-hitter in a season, which was 38.

If Hundley gets 40, he will become only the second switch-hitter to reach that plateau. Mickey Mantle did it four times.

Mantle? Campanella? Who would have thought it?

Hundley hit 29 homers in 1,452 minor league at-bats. Defense kept him in the big leagues after his 1990 arrival at 20.

He totaled 31 homers in 566 at-bats during injury- and strike-shortened seasons in 1994 and ’95.

At 27, he is a stocky 5 feet 10, 185 pounds. Sluggers Mark McGwire, Frank Thomas, Albert Belle and Mo Vaughn might use him as a barbell.

“I never anticipated that Todd would hit 38 or 40 homers a year, but I thought he could be in the 25-to-30 range,” said father Randy Hundley, the former Chicago Cub catcher.

“If you project what he did in each of the last two years over a full season, that’s about where he’d be.

“I think he’s gotten stronger over the years and learned a lot about himself and the game. Home runs also have a way of perpetuating themselves.

“I mean, if you start off a season hitting them, you tend to develop a confidence that you can keep doing it. It’s almost a Yogi-ism. The more you hit, the more you’re going to hit.”

The frequency with which Hundley has hit them prompted Roxie Campanella, Roy’s widow, to visit him in the dugout at Dodger Stadium recently.

Campanella wished Hundley well and said later that her husband thought Dodger catcher Mike Pizza would be the one to break his record.

“But he would also be the first to congratulate Todd,” she said. “He felt the record was there to be broken and didn’t care who did it.

“He’d give credit to anyone who was good enough to do it. I think it’s great that it’s happening.”

Hundley said he was honored to have Campanella’s widow take the time to introduce herself, honored to be mentioned in the same category.

“I’ve seen pictures of him, read about him and talked to my dad about him,” Hundley said of Campanella. “He was a Hall of Fame catcher who could flat-out hit. Who knows? He might have hit 50 some year [if his career hadn’t been ended by the 1958 car accident].”

The pursuit, perhaps, is weighing on Hundley. He has only one homer since Aug. 21.

Hundley batted .209, .228 and .237 in his first three seasons with the Mets, then jumped to .280 last year. He is currently at .271 with 106 runs batted in. He has tied Darryl Strawberry’s club record for home runs and needs 11 more RBIs to tie Johnson’s club record.

How strange. The Mets always told him to concentrate on defense, not hitting. He heard it so often that it would have been easy to start believing he couldn’t hit, wouldn’t hit, “but you learn to tune it out. I wasn’t going to let it mess up my career.”

“His learning curve is still rising,” said Dallas Green, fired recently as the Mets’ manager. “I don’t think we’ve seen the best of him yet. Offensively and defensively he’s something special, but he’ll be even more dangerous when he learns the strike zone a little better and recognizes off-speed pitches. He has an uppercut swing, a great power swing.”

Hundley came to the majors as a pull hitter. Batting instructor Tom McCraw convinced him he could use the whole field without having to be a slap hitter. Now he’s trying to keep it simple . . . leave his brain in the dugout, he said, and hit the ball hard.

“I’ve proven that I can hit home runs, but I’m more concerned with being a consistent run producer--driving in runs and scoring them,” he said. “I mean, what’s a home run? Nothing more than a long fly ball or line drive. Thank God they put fences out there because I certainly couldn’t keep running that far.”

Other factors play into Hundley’s offensive emergence. The young catcher who came to the majors thinking he had to be a body builder and tore up his shoulder in heavy weight work now concentrates on flexibility and has moved with his wife and three children from Illinois to Florida, two miles from the Mets’ spring base, so he can maintain a winter program in warm weather.

Hundley also credits Green with improving his attitude and approach two years ago by bluntly telling him he wasn’t getting the job done and wasn’t going to make it.

“It was like, ‘Hey, Fonzie, wake up, this is your life. Get serious,’ ” Hundley said, adding that since then his game preparation as both hitter and catcher has been much more thorough.

“Dallas has been a huge factor in my career,” Hundley said. “One of my biggest influences.”

Another, of course, has been his father. Randy Hundley said his son has had tunnel vision in regard to baseball and catching but was never pushed--at least at the start.

“I bought him his first catcher’s gear, which was about eight sizes too big, but only after his mom signed him up for tee-ball and Todd said that was the position he wanted to play,” the senior Hundley said. “At that point I don’t think he even knew I was a catcher.”

Dad eventually became a manager in the Cub minor league system, and the young Hundley spent summers in Iowa, Texas and Florida, exposed to the game at the grass-roots level, when he wasn’t receiving tutoring in the grass of the backyard.

“We worked hard,” Randy Hundley said. “I’d tell him, ‘If you don’t want to become a player, that’s fine; but if you do, then let’s keep working.’ There were times he’d have tears in his eyes, but I convinced him that this was what he had to do to reach the majors.”

Hundley, who now organizes fantasy camps from an office in Palatine, Ill., coached his son at the American Legion level and has remained a pivotal influence--via phone or in person.

During spring training in Florida a few years ago, Jerry Hunsicker, then the Mets’ assistant general manager and now general manager of the Houston Astros, felt the senior Hundley was interfering with changes the Mets were trying to make in his son’s catching techniques and asked him to back off.

“I told Hunsicker that he could work with Todd’s hitting all he wanted but to leave his catching alone,” Hundley said. “I don’t think it went over too well, but I didn’t care.

“I know the Mets had good intentions, but what they were trying wasn’t working. Todd had developed some arm trouble and [what the Mets wanted him to do] could have led to major problems, jeopardizing his career.

“The point is, I hadn’t started it. One of their coaches said to me that Todd’s arm didn’t seem as strong as it had been and I gave him my opinion as to why that was. Hunsicker overheard us, thought I was interfering and asked to speak to me. Look, I’m not your typical dad off the street. I know what I’m talking about. Don’t treat me like I don’t.”

The Hundleys communicate frequently. Dad watches almost every game on cable or satellite, but there is less and less to critique and correct. The senior Hundley hit 82 career homers. His son is about to break the record for homers by a catcher.

“The thing I’m proudest about is that Todd has kept it in perspective,” Randy Hundley said. “He still recognizes that his objective is to win and help get his pitcher through the game. He’s a catcher first. Anything he does at the plate is a bonus.”

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Home Runs by Catchers Single-season leaders: *--*

Player, Team Year HR Roy Campanella, Brooklyn 1953 40* Todd Hundley, Mets 1996 39 Johnny Bench, Reds 1970 38** Gabby Hartnett, Cubs 1930 36*** Mike Piazza, Dodgers 1993 35 Walker Cooper, N.Y. Giants 1947 35

*--*

*--Finished season with 41. Hit one pinch-hit homer.

**--Finished season with 45. Hit seven homers as a first baseman.

***--Finished season with 37. Hit one pinch-hit homer.