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Return to form Veterans bouncing back from lost seasons
Posted: Friday May 05, 2000 07:55 AM
They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but you'd be surprised how quickly a veteran player will try just about anything to succeed. Here are some of the guys who've used that "win at any cost" mentality to turn it around in April: Terry Mulholland gave up 12 earned runs in his first 8 1/3 innings this season. Terry told me he totally scrapped his approach to pitching after that and decided to try Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux's plan of working away to hitters. He won three straight starts after that. Sometimes it just takes a small change to make a big difference. In 1985, my teammate John Tudor started the year just 1-7. John's high school catcher called him up and said he had spotted a flaw in his delivery. John corrected that and went 20-1 the rest of the season. Advice from an old friend is working for Frank Thomas, too. The Big Hurt posted full-season career lows in homers and RBIs last year. But a strategy session with former hitting coach Walt Hriniak has Thomas hitting like a batting champ again. He's a big reason the White Sox set a record for runs scored in April with 181. Derek Bell is turning out to be the real gem of the Mike Hampton deal. Bell posted the worst full-season batting average of his career in 1999, but the Mets coaches have worked to get a slight hitch out of his swing. It worked. Bell's already a third of the way to his home run total from a year ago and is among the league leaders in hitting. You can't judge Todd Hundley on his .207 batting average from last year. Dodgers manager Davey Johnson told me Hundley played with no feeling in the fingers of his right hand in some of those games. This season Hundley is healthy and batting around .300.
Veterans can bounce back from injuries or bad seasons more easily than younger player because they don't have to fight the fear of not belonging in the big leagues. After all, they wouldn't be veterans if they hadn't succeeded before.
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