from Amazon
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Denard Span
Span talking about how people always wanted to change him from who he was:
DS: When I got drafted, anybody who scouted me will remember that I was a small-framed guy, but I had pretty good pop, so to speak. I wasn’t a slap hitter coming out of high school; I was a guy who could drive the ball into the gaps. I wasn’t a home-run hitter, but I was a guy who could drive the ball. When I got drafted, they took me with the idea of making me into a leadoff hitter and they wanted me to slap the ball. That had them changing my hitting approach to try to stay inside the ball and hit ground balls to the left side of the infield instead of turning on balls. I did that for two-and-half, three years, and it almost got to the point where I didn’t know how to turn on a ball. On an inside pitch, I’d try to fight it the other way.
Finally, I got to Double-A and a scout who had seen me in high school, and had been promoted to a position in our minor-league system, remembered seeing me as a 17-year-old kid. At that age, I was probably 25 pounds lighter than I was at 22. So, when he saw me at 22 he said, “I remember when you were 170 pounds and now you’re close to 200 pounds and you hit the ball farther, with more strength, as a 17-year-old. That doesn‘t make sense to me.” After that, they had me, finally, working on turning on the ball and driving it. I almost felt like I… I don’t want to say “wasted"three years, but I was working on something for three years that I don’t think I should have been.
How many Vladimir Guerrero’s have we lost?