Baseball Men - The Power Hitter

Peter Handrinos continues his “Baseball Men” series with this telling Dale Murphy interview…

For a good portion of your career, it looked like you might be on track for the Hall of Fame. How can account for struggling in the final years of your career?

I thought I’d be around a little bit longer, too. You know, when I was in my early 30’s, I thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll be playing until I’m at least 40’.

One of the things was physical breakdown in my knee. I only played something like 15, 20 games in ’92 and, after that, I came back in 1993, but I wasn’t nearly 100%.

What it proved is - in baseball, once you lose a little bit, you lose a lot. Just a half-step or a step are enough for you to lose your effectiveness - you’re not quite legging out that hit or quite reaching that line drive. And just a fraction of a second in timing is enough for you to lose out on solid contact at the plate and then you see an extra-base swing become a single and the singles become outs.