Tom Brennan - Favorite Hitter Styles over the Years

We were all kids once.  Good times.  Back when there were no baseball lockouts and the best pitchers made $125,000 - no, not per inning, like some do today, but for the entire season.  When you could either pay $1.50 to get an upper deck seat at Shea, or trade in 10 milk carton coupons to get into the park instead (easy to do, since my folks had 9 kids).

When I was a kid, I used to love to alternate my hitting machinations to emulate the plate style of these three guys:

1) Tommie Agee - with the pronounced plate tap on every warm up wave of the bat.   

2) Donn Clendenon - with his fluid, sweeping pre-swing looping bat motions.

3) Willie Stargell - with his windmilling his bat before the pitch came in. And then often headed far into the night.  Or over the roof at Forbes Field, a prodigious feat he is reported to have accomplished more than all other hitters combined.  I hated - and loved - Stargell.  

I remember a Mets reliever once in a key spot (was it McGraw?  Can't remember?) looking like he had caught Willie looking on a pitch on the black, but the ump's arm stayed down. I was so mad, knowing what might come next.  It did...a tape measure shot.  I seem to recall - and maybe my memory is playing tricks on me - another game where it was blistering hot, and Tom Seaver was working in the 8th or 9th inning - tiring a bit - and Stargell launched one off him over the roof.

Of course, all 3 of those lumberjacks impressed me greatly with their hitting prowess.

When I was about 12 or 13, my local school building (St. Greg's grammar school in Bellerose) was about 12 feet behind the outfield fence and just in foul territory, to the right of the right field foul line.  Because the school's original large field near the Cross Island Parkway (between Jamaica Ave. and Hillside Ave.) was used to build a large school auditorium, the field was moved to the back side of the property, to a smaller field between the school and the nearby homes.  As a result, due to a space squeeze, down the line in right field was just 155 feet.  

When I'd accumulate a few worn out baseballs, I knew what to do with them.  I'd have my next-youngest brother Bob pitch to me, and I'd not only imitate the Stargell windmill, I'd hit the balls onto the roof a la Stargell.  It was a thrill, even if I hit them a lot shorter than Willie used to smack them.  I felt like Stargell for a moment.  "Up On The Roof!"

I used to also love Dave Kingman's savage all-or-nothing swings - because he may have missed a lot, but when he connected, rocket launches occurred.  He once, in spring training, worked something out with Goose Gossage where the Goose would throw as hard as he could right down the middle of the plate, to see what Kingman (who knew only fastballs would be coming) could do with one.  

He totally got into one, and it sailed past the lights into the dark night.  At the time, Gossage said (tongue-in-cheek - or not) that the ball may have gone 700 feet.

I used to try Matty Alou's swing too - holding the hands inches apart on the bat and spraying it around - he sure didn't hit them 700 feet, but he hit over .300 8 times, and over .330 four times - his style didn't work for me, but it sure worked for Alou the Spray Master.

I also imitated Hank Aaron's pre-swing style.  Good choice of a guy to emulate.  I did not have those buggy whip wrists, though.

How about you folks - who did/do you like and/or imitate in that regard?   Wide open stance, closed stance, crouched stance guys - what?