Swing Kings by Jared Diamond

Author:Jared Diamond
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

10

On the Verge

Chris Colabello finished the 2011 season—the season after he reshaped his swing with Bobby Tewksbary—with the best numbers of his career. He hit .348 with 20 home runs and a 1.010 OPS in 412 plate appearances. Baseball America, one of the industry’s premier scouting publications, named Colabello the Independent League Player of the Year.

Colabello was hooked. All he ever wanted to do was spend time in the cage with Tewksbary. “It was like a drug,” he said. Meanwhile, Tewksbary’s stock was starting to rise. Buoyed by Colabello’s success, he started posting articles and videos of some of their training together online, and people started noticing. Not only did the new swing appear to help Colabello, but the experience of working with him helped Tewksbary understand it and devise better ways to teach it to the younger hitters who came by his facility. “It was validation,” Tewksbary said. “A low level, but validation.”

Skepticism still abounded. Tewksbary would frequently hear from other coaches and parents, and the conversation usually started with them asking, “What the hell are you talking about?” Tewksbary would respond by requesting that the skeptic “just put in a couple hours of objective video study. Look at what the barrel’s doing, look at what the body’s doing. What I’m telling you is not wrong. You might not love the way I’m saying it, but it’s not wrong.”

As spring training drew closer, Colabello had started to resign himself to another year in Worcester. Then his agent called with news: the Twins had expressed interest. They sent a scout to watch him work out before offering him an opportunity to attend spring training. There were no promises made, no commitments, no guarantees. But for the first time, Colabello had a foot in the door. After toiling away in the independent leagues for seven long seasons, he finally had a shot.

That said, the Twins weren’t necessarily the best fit. Led by old-school general manager Terry Ryan and his equally old-school manager Ron Gardenhire, the Twins weren’t exactly receptive to new ideas about how to swing the bat. Tewksbary called them “anti-progressive.” True to form, Colabello said that within one week of his arrival in Fort Myers, Twins coaches were trying to change his swing. They wanted to eliminate the high leg kick he had developed with Tewksbary, along with the rearward barrel movement that Tewksbary had helped him perfect. They told him, “This isn’t going to work in Double A.” For Colabello, who had about as little leverage as anybody in camp, failing to appear coachable would be a quick ticket back to Worcester.

Colabello called Tewksbary for advice. “What do I do?” he asked his friend. “Don’t listen to them,” Tewksbary responded. “Just be yourself.” For the rest of camp, Colabello did his best balancing act, giving the appearance that he was listening and internalizing the information in the cage, but using the swing he had worked on with Tewksbary in games and hoping his performance would get the coaches off his back.

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