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Home , Albert Pujols, Barry Bonds, Dan Lozano, Don Slaught, Syd Thrift

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(PERFORMANCE) HOW TO BUILD THE * PERFECT BATTER Since the beginning of , scouts and managers have regarded the hunt for great sluggers as an almost mystical search. But it’s just dawning on the game that the future Ruths and Bondses and Pujolses will be discovered by rational scientists—and soon even steroids will seem quaint by Nate Penn

The perfect swings: on a sweltering summer afternoon in 1921, *top row, Mickey belted a home deep into the bleachers at the , Mantle, , then took a car down Broadway to a laboratory at Columbia , ; bottom University, where two grad students in the department of row, , Mike psychology prodded and poked at him for three hours in an Schmidt, , attempt to figure out why he could so many more home .

runs than any other person on the planet. ››› CLOCKWISEGETTY FROMIMAGES; TOP LEFT:RICH PILLING/MLBGETTY IMAGES; PHOTOS JED JACOBSOHN/GETTYVIA GETTY IMAGES; IMAGES; MICHAEL NATIONAL ZAGARIS/MLB BASEBALL PHOTOS HALL VIA OF GETTY FAME LIBRARY/MLBIMAGES; TONY PHOTOS TOMSIC/MLB VIA GETTY PHOTOS IMAGES; VIA GETTY RICH IMAGESPILLING/MLB PHOTOS VIA GETTY IMAGES;

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powers. The question that a few people in The researchers’ equipment was state-of-the-art, and outside of the game are asking is: Can circa 1921: a Hipp chronoscope, which they attached we create lab tests to assess an amateur to the Babe’s bat to calculate its speed; a kymograph, ballplayer’s innate abilities—his power, his eyesight, his reaction time, his psychologi- which they connected to tubing strung on his torso cal fitness—and predict whether or not he’ll in order to record the rate of his breathing; and a succeed in the majors? And the answer is yeah, without a doubt. So how much longer tachistoscope (a sort of slide projector with a shutter before the rest of baseball catches on? like a camera’s), with which they measured how

fast his eyes reacted to stimuli. In all, they ran the in the 240-millisecond* * * interval be- Babe through eight tests on six different scientific tween the ’s release of a ninety- apparatuses, and the results, published in Popular mile-per-hour fastball and the batter’s initiation of his swing, a lot has to happen. Science, were “a revelation” that showed Ruth’s The batter must see the pitch (one hundred “coordination of eye, brain, nerve system, and milliseconds), process its trajectory and velocity (seventy-five milliseconds), de- muscle [to be] practically perfect.” Even The New cide whether and how to swing (fifty mil- York Times got in on the excitement, touting the liseconds), and initiate that swing (fifteen milliseconds). The hoped-for result of this Ruth experiments on its front page of September 11, sequence of fleeting neurological and phys- 1921: ruth supernormal, so he hits homers. ical impulses is the striking of a 7.3-centi- meter-wide spinning ball 2.65 centimeters Today the Popular Science account reads below dead center at an upward angle of as a slightly laughable mixture of hero 9.132947254385321 degrees—these being worship, hype, and sham science. But the the optimal parameters for hitting a home magazine did make one suggestion that, run, according to a 2003 paper published in eighty-five years later, is more relevant than the American Journal of Physics. ever. “If baseball-club owners…submit can- And here’s a further complication: The didates to the comprehensive tests under- ball loses 5 percent of its velocity as it ap- gone by Ruth,” the author wrote, “[they can] proaches the plate. And one more: “The discover whether or not other Ruths exist.” rate of slowing down is not uniform,” says It’s a future baseball has yet to embrace, Mont Hubbard, director of the Sports Bio- but for reasons both of public relations and mechanics Laboratory at UC-Davis. Due economics, the game can’t really wait much to a physical phenomenon called the drag longer. The PR issue is obvious. Baseball crisis, the ball, released from the pitcher’s needs its sluggers, but it needs them to hit hand, initially escapes drag for about a home runs that aren’t steroid fueled. And tenth of a second. “So it looks like it’s com- the economic rationale, while it lacks the ing at you really fast,” Hubbard explains to tawdry intrigue of ballplayers sticking me, “and then like it runs into some honey. needles in their asses, is more compelling That’s going to throw the batter o≠.” still. Even now, in the post-Moneyball era of So why are some batters so much less general managing, baseball teams are fairly thrown o≠ than others? The first and easiest astonishing in their ability—and willing- part of the explanation has to do with hitting ness—to squander huge piles of cash. Major mechanics. “Take and Mickey league clubs collectively pay out about $160 The October 1921 issue of Popular Science. Mantle,” Don Slaught, the ’ million annually on amateur players and * hitting coach, says to me over the phone. an additional $550 million, or $18.33 mil- become scouts and coaches,” says Brad To illustrate the point he’s about to make, lion per team, on development. More than Kullman, until recently the assistant GM Slaught connects his computer in Detroit to half of the priciest picks fizzle out—more of the . “There tends to be mine in New York and clicks his mouse. Sud- than half—but this, for most teams, is just a closed-mindedness to new information. denly, the two men appear side by side on the cost of doing business. Syd Thrift, the That’s what keeps you stuck on the tread- my screen: the slugger Mantle in his wide, pioneering former general of the mill of mediocrity.” flat-footed stance, powerful and balanced, and , Marcus Elliott, a Harvard M.D. who trains and the burner Ichiro, knock-kneed, bat at holds back nothing in his assessment of pro athletes at P3: Peak Performance Proj- his ear, his weight resting on his back leg so modern-day baseball executives: “Every- ect in Santa Barbara, California, puts it even that only his front toe touches the ground. body thinks they’re ahead,” he says, “and more bluntly: “In terms of testing and condi- For years Slaught has been stockpiling foot- they’re so far behind it’s pitiful. They say, tioning, baseball today is in the Dark Ages. age, all captured from the same angle, of ‘Everything’s under control.’ You have a In fact, the Babe Ruth testing was more ap- virtually every great hitter in the game. I sit $200 million payroll under control?” propriate and more intensive than anything staring at my computer as, in increments of Baseball needs to adopt an unsentimen- any professional team is doing right now.” seventeen milliseconds, Ichiro and Mantle tal, scientific approach to player evaluation This is the story of an approach to talent initiate their swings. It’s astonishing and a and training. But this is the very thing that evaluation that, like “moneyball,” o≠ers a little eerie: Over a series of steps that lasts so many baseball guys, faithful to the stale way for smart but poor teams to gain ground only a quarter of a second and is normally myths of divining talent, have rejected for on rich and complacent ones—a story of a invisible to the naked eye, the swing me- years. “Many people in baseball get drafted new approach to the game facing enormous chanics of the two men—the positioning of

COPYRIGHT 1921 TIME4MEDIA, INC. outREPRINTED WITH of PERMISSION. high ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. school, become players, then resistance from entrenched front-o∞ce their feet, legs, hips, trunks, shoulders, arms,

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heads—are revealed to be identical. “What that bat speed alone, despite what many players, probably only Barry Bonds’s head do all the best hitters do that makes them analysts tend to say, tells us pretty much moves less.) As the pitcher goes into his better than the rest of us?” Slaught asks, and nothing about performance. windup, the majority of hitters raise their then answers his own question. “Everyone In Detroit, Slaught clicks his mouse front leg, using it as a sort of fulcrum and prepares di≠erently,” he says, “but they all again and suddenly, in four quadrants of planting it just before contact in order to swing virtually the same way.” my computer screen, I’m watching video transfer energy to the ball. But Pujols, without I bring up the subject of Albert Pujols, of, respectively, Pujols, , raising his front leg, achieves the same end. who at this point in the summer, just be- , and Ivan Rodriguez. As How he does it hinges on the latest devel- fore an injury sidelined him, was threaten- the players move their bats forward, four opments in the young field of baseball bio- ing Barry Bonds’s - home-run pitches enter the various frames. Slaught mechanics. Baseball, says Marcus Elliott, record. Surely Pujols must personify the freezes the image of Pujols and draws a is unusual among the major sports for its qualities that make a hitter great. And what green line from the ball to the heart of the emphasis on what he calls angular momen- are those, anyway? Does Pujols in fact have ’s mitt. He then traces the inverted tum: “You have to figure out how to apply the fastest bat in the game, as The Sporting arc of Pujols’s bat in red. On the other end of force against the ground in a way that’s go- News has suggested? “No,” says Slaught. the phone, Slaught laughs in disbelief. “He’s ing to allow your body to develop rotational “Just about everyone’s about the same.” on plane for about five feet!” power,” he says. When I mention Pujols, In a separate GQ study in a St. Louis What he means is this: The portion of the Elliott says that of late he’s been using him as laboratory, a small group of star-struck re- green line (the ball’s path) marked by the Exhibit A when explaining these concepts to searchers will calculate Pujols’s bat speed two ends of the curving red line (the sweep ballplayers. “Pujols does this probably bet- to be 86.99 miles per hour (see box). Perfor- of the bat) is Pujols’s “big zone,” the span of ter than anybody in baseball, and he does mance coach Craig Pippin, who has done time and space during which the sweet spot it early: He sets up these really big ground- bat-speed studies at Motion DNA, a Scotts- of his bat remains on the same plane as the reaction angles. Look how far both knees dale, Arizona, biomechanics firm, says that ball. In fact, Slaught observes, the sweet spot are inside of his feet when he sets up at the these results place Pujols at the low end of Pujols’s bat stays inside the “big zone” for plate. He’s practically pigeon-toed.” of the pro-player spectrum. Which I can’t so long that even if he mistimes the pitch, he By angling your back knee inside your believe. If the greatest in the will still, in most cases, make contact with it. foot, you redirect horizontally the vertical game has average bat speed, then whose bat Watching the video in tiny slow-motion energy produced when you push o≠ the is fast? Kevin Reese’s, that’s whose. Reese increments, I can see that Pujols’s mechan- ground. But Elliott tells me that most hit- is a seven-year minor league veteran cur- ics, even among this group of superstars, ters don’t start their swing from this posi- rently in the Yankees system whose cut was are uniquely spectacular: His head is nearly tion, which is why they stride: to bring the clocked by Pippin at ninety-eight miles per motionless, which is a function, I’m told, of back knee forward. “But Pujols just starts hour. But his lameness as a hitter suggests his e∞cient no-stride swing. (Among active there,” Elliott says. “He doesn’t need to go

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SEP Performance lo;39.indd 298 7/25/06 12:19:30 PM 0906-GQ-ET298 anywhere.” Elliott has installed several the two pictures until a duplicate third pic- tells me. Bowden first consulted Harrison hundred thousand dollars’ worth of force ture starts to materialize. And after a few while serving as GM in Cincinnati. “When I plates at his facility to assess the “vector moments, the ghost image appears briefly drafted ,” Bowden says, “Harri- coordinates” of an athlete’s application of for me, followed by a headache. son told us he had Barry Bonds’s eyes. With energy to the ground. The plates calculate For thirty-five years, Harrison has helped the other information I had, that gave me a the power, speed, and direction of a hitter’s teams like the , Cin- pretty good idea that he had a chance to hit angular momentum. Elliott hopes eventu- cinnati Reds, and evaluate a bunch of home runs in the big leagues— ally to derive a sort of ideal force profile the athletes they and trade for, but maybe even forty or fifty a year.” It’s panned for hitters of every height, weight, and most major league clubs are still skeptical of out okay for the Reds; Dunn, 26, has hit forty physique. What he’s told me is that Pujols, his methods. In as little as fifteen minutes, or more homers in each of the past two sea- swinging his bat at the unimpressive speed Harrison tells me, using no more equipment sons and is on pace to top fifty this year. of 86.99 miles per hour, actually generates considerably more force than the paltry Kevin Reese does at ninety-eight miles per hour. “Many people in baseball get drafted out of high * * * school, become players, then become scouts but baseball is filled with sweet- and coaches,” says Brad Kullman. “There tends swinging players whose names we’ll never remember. And the likely reason is that to be a closed-mindedness to new information.” those guys simply can’t see the ball in the way that the great hitters do. Which is why I’ve come to a Residence Inn in Arlington, than fits in a du≠el bag, he can render an Over the next week, Harrison, Bowden, Virginia. A stout middle-aged man in a black opinion as to which players will succeed in and others will convince me that highly polo shirt is standing in front of me, holding the majors and which will bomb. developed binocularity—the coordinated a small rectangle of cardboard a few feet On the day I visit him, the baseball draft functioning of the eyes, particularly while from my eyes. It’s imprinted with two iden- is just forty-eight hours away, and Harrison they track a moving object—ought to be tical scenes, bisected by a narrow white line, is here in D.C. to assess several prospects the considered baseball’s “sixth tool.” (Scouts of a rock-strewn beach. William Harrison, Nationals are interested in. “We’ve learned have traditionally emphasized five tools: an ex–college ballplayer turned optometrist that there’s a very close relationship be- the abilities to hit for average, to hit for turned performance coach, instructs me to tween depth perception and a player’s per- power, to run, to throw the ball, and to field stare at a point between, above, and beyond formance,” , the Nationals’ GM, it.) That’s how predictive binocularity is of a

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hitter’s success, and that’s what the beach- scene eye-card test measures. Can you bear with me for a brief Bill Nye moment? Here goes: Your ability to per- ceive depth is made possible by the spacing of your eyes, which take in from two slightly di≠erent perspectives two separate images of whatever you’re looking at. When those images meet in the brain, they form a single three-dimensional picture in which you can read both the placement and movement of objects in space. But your eyes have only that one point of stereoscopic focus. Outside of it, they see everything in twos, though your brain has learned to suppress this. In e≠ect, the eye card assesses how broad your point of stereoscopic focus is, and among the tiny, self-selected population of world- class ballplayers, it can be amazingly broad indeed. Some guys literally cut the eye card in half, Harrison tells me, and free-fuse it at twelve to eighteen inches. Bonds, whose vision is the best among the “thousands and thousands” of players Harrison has tested, can do so at a distance of four feet. Which is ALBERT VS. THE BABE outrageous, and which has nothing to do, (VS. PENN) by the way, with BALCO. But still, why is * binocularity important in baseball? This spring, GQ persuaded Albert Pujols, his dominant left hand in sixty seconds. Popular “With less-than-perfect binocularity, reigning MVP and the game’s Science indicates that the average score on the brain will suppress the simple vision most dominant slugger, to take time off from an this test was 82. Pujols took fifty-six seconds to epic home-run tear and reenact, at Washington complete the pegboard test with his dominant of one eye,” Harrison says. “One eye alone University in St. Louis, the 1921 Babe Ruth tests. right hand, which places him in the seventy-ninth is su∞cient to see the seams on the ball or Even if Pujols held himself back a bit (“Psych tests percentile (“high average”). His speed startled its trajectory. But a one-eyed hitter has no are nice, but Albert just cares about baseball,” White. “There’s no question that his are the largest depth perception.” Don Slaught describes a says his agent, of the Beverly Hills hands ever to have worked with my pegboard.” Sports Council), he made history that day. test he conducted with a group of hitters: TEST #4 While a pitching machine delivered the TEST #1 DIGIT/SYMBOL SUBSTITUTION baseball at a consistent speed, the players, BAT SPEED AND POWER On a 1921 version of this test, which requires you each wearing a patch over one eye, hit as This one is straightforward enough: How fast to convert weird symbols into numbers—as many can the greatest hitter in the game swing his bat? as possible in one minute—Babe Ruth achieved well as usual. Once the machine began vary- In 1921, the Babe swung his Flintstone-esque a score that Popular Science cited as “the ing speeds, however, they started whi∞ng. fifty-four-ouncer at seventy-five miles per hour, average of all who have tried it.” Pujols’s score, “The change of velocity really kills ’em,” creating enough energy to fleetingly power a 67, was also average. Mine, 101, put me in the Harrison says. “They can’t read it. It’s a 2003 Prius. At Wash. U., using a 31.5-ounce bat, 95th percentile. Take that, Poo-hole! But not so Pujols reached 86.99 miles per hour, generating fast. On a separate part of the test, in which you bigger factor than velocity itself.” If you the equivalent of nineteen horsepower—sufficient simply copy the symbols, I did 112. Pujols, though, misjudge the speed of a ninety-mile-per- to run, very briefly, a John Deere lawn tractor. I completed a mind-bending 133. White says that hour pitch by five miles per hour, he says, swung a comparable bat at 50.78 miles per hour, Pujols’s score—yet another testament to his your bat position will be o≠ by two feet. not even enough horsepower to rev up Tara Reid. spectacular motor skills—falls beyond the range for which the testmaker presents any diagnostic Misjudge the speed by 2.5 miles per hour and TEST #2 interpretation. It’s literally off the charts. you’ll miss the ball by one foot. Misjudge it LETTER CROSS-OUT by one mile per hour and you’re four inches The test rates aspects of the brain’s ability to TEST #5 shy of the target. Says Bowden, “The year we process visual information, and Popular Science FINGER TAPPING reported that the Babe scored “one and a half With your index finger, you depress a tapper as drafted Dunn, there was another player of times the average.” But we have no idea what many times as possible in ten seconds. In 1921, on equal ability in the draft. Bill Harrison said, that means, because the test, says Wash. U. a different apparatus that measured gross motor ‘This guy’s got no depth perception. He’s psychology professor Desirée White, wasn’t speed differently, Babe Ruth scored “better than not gonna be able to recognize di≠erences “well-normed.” Pujols was given a sheet of 499 persons out of 500.” Of all the tests we’d be jumbled text and told to cross out all the A’s as taking, this one undoubtedly represented my best in velocity.’ ” The Reds passed, Bowden rapidly as possible, which he did in sixty-one chance to hold my own against Pujols and the says, “and it played out exactly as Bill told us seconds (seven seconds faster than my time). Babe (I type 120 words per minute), but Pujols got it would.” White says that in eighteen years of administering into my kitchen instantly. “ With his dominant right A batter must decide whether or not to this test, she’s never seen anyone else adopt hand, he was 2.4 standard deviations faster than Pujols’s “visual-search strategy.” “Most people will most people,” says White. Pujols’s score ranked swing when the ball has traveled 48 percent scan for everything in an area before they move in the ninety-ninth percentile, meaning that if one of the distance to the plate—that is, when it’s on,” she says, but Pujols’s eyes swept the page hundred people were to take this test, only one twenty-six feet away. To locate it as near to like searchlights, tracing a repeating S-shaped “would even have a shot” at matching his score. the point of release as possible, he must, until path. It’s a result suggestive of extraordinary “He actually tapped faster in later trials,” she binocularity (see story). says. “Most people don’t.” We also witnessed the the last possible moment, maintain his eyes formidable power of the Pujols digit: At one point in a state of what Harrison calls “soft focus.” TEST #3 PEGBOARD he struck the tapper so hard that he knocked a If a hitter doesn’t pick up a pitch right away, The test assesses fine motor control and speed screw loose. His score compared favorably to he has to make a series of jerky and abrupt and involves inserting as quickly as possible Ruth’s—and he destroyed me with both his right twenty-five steel pegs into holes punched in a and left hands. My conclusion: Albert Pujols has eye movements—called saccades—to catch plain metal box. In 1921, on a comparable piece more athletic talent in his right index finger than I

up to it. And here is where the chance arises of equipment, Babe Ruth scored 132 hits with have in my entire body.—N.P. PUJOLS: DANIEL STIER; RUTH: PACIFIC AND ATLANTIC/DAILY NEWS PIX

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for what Harrison calls micromistakes. president, “because several baseball teams “The pitcher hides the ball and throws a have expressed interest in them, and the hundred miles per hour, and you don’t teams will not consider drafting a player even know where the damn thing’s coming unless they have a report on his personality from,” he says. “I’ll tell you one thing, you’re and attitude.” For thirty-eight years, WRI gonna have a fast saccadic trying to find has produced and analyzed that report— it.” (At Peak Performance Project, Marcus called the Athletic Success Profile—and Elliott has used a laser-based apparatus some 70,000 amateur players have com- worn on the head to both assess and train pleted it. Their responses form the data- the e∞ciency of players’ eye movements. base against which WRI ranks prospective “We can measure small perturbations in draftees in eleven Athletic Success Traits, linear tracking of the eyeball,” he says. “If from drive to leadership to emotional con- the eye is bouncing around, your brain has trol to coachability. WRI’s calculation of to make these additional calculations.”) their scores is a Gobi-dry actuarial process William Harrison confides he knows of a highly touted catcher who’s likely to be chosen early in the draft. “He sees only with one eye,” Harrison says. “He’ll never make it as a hitter.”

Given his considerable success over featuring stu≠ like norm tables, frequency three decades, why isn’t Harrison getting distributions, and bell curves, and its end calls for his services from every front o∞ce result is a six-page report that predicts in the league? “I think he’s had a tremen- whether or not a kid will fulfill his athletic dous impact on individual players,” says talent. “What we frequently see,” Winslow John Farrell, farm director of the Cleveland says, sounding not unlike a parochial- Indians, “but the empirical evidence is lim- school nun, “is an athlete with fantastic ited. There isn’t a large database that says God-given gifts who never reaches his po- this person went through these drills and tential because he does not have the proper this is where he ended up.” Bowden dis- mental attitude and personality.” agrees. “We’ve seen guys like Jose Guillen, A player taking the WRI assessment who had below-average depth perception must select the most appropriate mul- when he first started working with Dr. Har- tiple-choice response (e.g., “true,” “some- rison, become stars,” he says. Harrison says what true,” “false”) to 190 athlete-themed his techniques can boost a hitter’s average statements, such as “To really be success- by as many as fifty points. ful in my sport, I believe you must obey all If teams don’t hire Harrison—and the rules,” “When my opponents beat me, I twenty-seven of them don’t—then who are willingly congratulate them after the con- they hiring? The answer in some cases is test,” and “After my coach strongly criti- nobody. How else can we understand the cizes me, it bothers me for days.” Winslow fact that Atlanta Braves left fielder Matt says the profile takes forty-five minutes to Diaz, struggling for seven years in the mi- complete and includes a variety of control nors, had never been told prior to spring questions designed to ensure that a player training 2006 that he needed vision correc- responds honestly and also that he’s pay- tion? (“On defense, I would misread balls ing attention. all the time,” Diaz says. “Dr. Harrison said, He won’t tell me how many major league ‘That’s because you have no depth percep- teams subscribe to the profiles, but he does tion past about eighty feet!’ ”) Diaz’s case acknowledge that San Diego, Minnesota, isn’t all that exceptional. Harrison tells me Texas, and Baltimore have been particu- he knows of a highly touted catcher who’s larly active of late. In Baltimore, he says, likely to be chosen early in the draft. The Dave Ritterpusch, the Orioles’ former di- diagnosis is simple: “He sees only with one rector of baseball information systems, eye,” Harrison says. “He’ll never make it as “knows more than anyone on earth about a hitter.” Two days after our conversation, the mental attitudes of ballplayers.” the kid is selected by an NL club, and less Ritterpusch is the William S. Burroughs than a week later, he signs. of baseball junkies. While working for the Orioles, he back-engineered three decades’ worth of profiles to determine which “trait every spring,* 500* or *so amateur play- packages” distinguish successful players. ers receive an e-mail from the Winslow Hundreds of the questionnaires reside in Research Institute of Discovery Bay, Cali- cardboard boxes in his house in the Bal- fornia. “They’re told that the Major League timore suburbs, and periodically, he tells Scouting Bureau has requested we contact me, he gets out of bed in the middle of them,” says William Winslow, the company’s the night and pores over his profiles. On

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one such night, he discovered his “Type B year out, of preventable mistakes.” By way professional athletes don’t matter in the Failure Cluster” for . “It’s very, very of example, he cites four Oriole first-round least when it comes to baseball. According subtle,” he remarks, which is his way of say- picks (he won’t name them) between 1997 to his regression analysis of 10,000 profiles, ing he’s not going to elaborate. (Again and and 2002. “They were $8 million worth of neither “coachability” nor “drive” are crucial again during hours of conversation, Ritter- predictable failures,” he says, adding that to a prospect’s chances of success or fail- pusch breaks o≠ in midsentence: “I don’t two of the four have already been released. ure. In other words, respect and ambition want to say too much,” he declares repeat- Ritterpusch is speaking rapidly and loudly are superfluous in the brain of a ballplayer. edly. “I’m in a guarded situation with the now. “The average first-rounder gets a Baseball simply “doesn’t reward the charac- proprietary nature of this.”) Still, he talks $2 million bonus!” he says. “Half of those ter traits that our society and church teach and talks and talks, partly because he loves guys flop. It blows my mind, but they keep us to prize,” Ritterpusch says. “Baseball isn’t this stu≠ and partly, I think, because for so chasing their tail!” a microcosm of life. That’s bullshit.” long so few colleagues willingly listened to He alludes to and the days him. “It’s been a fairly unique experience when talent was cheap; as Brooklyn’s GM, for me to speak at length with anyone in- Rickey accumulated no fewer than twenty- on a gorgeous* afternoon* * in early sum- volved in the game and not have snickers seven minor league clubs. “That was before mer, I visit the general manager’s box at and people looking away,” he says. agents, before high-cost signings, before RFK Stadium during the first inning of a A former military analyst at the Pentagon these huge research-and-development game between the Nationals and the Dodg- (he was also an assistant secretary of labor), costs,” he says. “But operational people to- ers. As Jae Seo goes into his windup on the Ritterpusch has worked in bureaucracies all day are familiar and comfortable with this field below us, a publicist whispers to Jim his life, and he uses psychometrics much in high-overhead, low-return way of doing Bowden, who’s seated at the far end of the the way the federal government and Fortune things. It’s all they know. They don’t expect room in front of an enormous window. 500 companies do: to evaluate the emotional baseball operations to be more productive. Bowden looks up at me with vague irrita- suitability of prospective employees for It’s just the way things are. It’s always gonna tion, as if he’s been awakened from a dream: certain specialized functions. In this case, be this way.” The whole process operates on The most rabid fan’s absorption in his lo- those functions are: infield, outfield, starter, principles antithetical to science, he says; cal team is nothing compared to its general setup man, and closer. For each one, Ritter- scouting is “emotional” and “irrational.” manager’s. Without taking his eyes o≠ the pusch uses the profiles to arrive at a vari- In Baltimore, he experienced considerable field, Bowden walks me to an aluminum bar ably weighted “key trait coe∞cient,” which resistance from scouts whose physically table in the middle of the room. Throughout in turn is translated into a percentile score, then scaled from 1 to 5 according to how well a player meets the psychological criteria The whole scouting process is “emotional” and for his respective function. “Five-pluses” are guys in the ninetieth to ninety-ninth “irrational,” Dave Ritterpusch says. “The percentile. “If you have outstanding physi- cal ability and you get a five, you’re gonna average first-rounder gets a $2 million bonus. be a star,” Ritterpusch says. “Period.” He as- sembles a five-plus infield for me (Helton, Half of those guys flop. It blows my mind!” Biggio, Jeter, Rolen, Varitek), along with a five-plus rotation (Clemens, Halladay, Beck- gifted prospects he’d rejected because of our conversation, he leans from one side to ett, Mussina, and Oswalt, with closers Ray weak trait scores. “Scouts and the organiza- the other, constantly angling for a view of and Papelbon). Foreign stars like Pedro and tions fall in love with these kids,” he says. the action below us. Mariano aren’t included here, since signifi- “They draft them high. They pay them huge Bowden is one of baseball’s most pro- cantly fewer Latin players take the test, and sums of money. They incur this overhead gressive-minded GMs, and within mo- the WRI hasn’t yet produced a Japanese or cost, and then later, when it’s too late, they ments he’s alluding to the Nationals’ work Korean edition. discover they have little or no value.” A scout with sabermetrics, with vision testing, with Within each function, Ritterpusch says, usually covers a circumscribed area of the psychometrics and IQ tests and neurosci- there’s no di≠erentiation psychologically. country, Ritterpusch explains, and has only ence. “The more information you have,” he Right field and left field are the same, as one or two promising amateur players to says, “the better chance you have of making are first base and . The outfield recommend in a given year; if you eliminate the right call on a player.” is where you stash your Mannys and those kids from consideration, the scout will Another paradigm shift, one even more She∞elds—guys who score low on traits feel “he didn’t get a player in the draft. But it transformative than sabermetrics, is in like “emotional control” or “mental tough- would be better if you just gave him $50,000 store for baseball. People may debate ness.” The infield, on the other hand, is the and told him to keep plugging rather than whether on-base percentage tells you more purview of the hard-nosed. And setup men waste your millions on his ballplayer.” about a player’s abilities than aver- are in e≠ect the outfielders of pitchers, un- Ideally, he says, if you crunch your numbers age does, but scientific data is fixed and in- suited emotionally for starting or closing. early enough in the process, you can “limit arguable—and guys like Bowden know that Over the years, Ritterpusch has identified your coverage and have your scouts focus they stand to benefit hugely from it. “trait clusters” that predict failure either by in depth on the right people.” Then he men- Marcus Elliott tells me, “I look at base- their presence or absence. “These seem to tions Delmon Young, the number one pick ball and I see how many things they do that be largely unrecognized in the industry,” in the 2003 draft, who was suspended for don’t make players better—how much low- he says, “and this is one of the things that fifty games this spring for throwing a bat lying fruit there is.” He says that “the con- keeps leading to the repetition, year in and at an umpire. Young never took the profile. ditioning in baseball is so backwards, and “Even if a guy has great physical ability, if in ways that are so ridiculously silly, that you don’t have a profile on him, don’t draft we’re gonna look back in five years and it’s not everyone was up for challenging him!” Ritterpusch says. gonna be like we were talking about turn- babe. writer nate penn talks In an e-mail he sends me after our last of-the-century methods.” What coaches about the athletes who balked—that includes you, a-rod!—at GQ.COM. conversation, Ritterpusch tells me that don’t understand, he goes on, is that the certain traits we tend to think of as vital in game is power- and not strength-based. Its

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▲ ALBERT PUJOLS

▲ ICHIRO SUZUKI

▲ ALEX RODRIGUEZ * From Don Slaught’s copious files, footage showing that every great batter, regardless of his initial stance, looks virtually the same. critical movements occur over fractions of Steroids represent the deepest incursion weight gain. Just then, just as his vision of a second, “and then you get to rest for quite science has yet made into baseball, and the baseball’s brave new world is coming into a while.” In a soon-to-be-published paper, ambivalence with which so many base- full bloom before my eyes, hundreds of peo- Elliott and his coauthor demonstrate that ball people view them—are performance- ple in red Nationals T-shirts jump to their “slow, continuous exercise specifically enhancing drugs a form of cheating or not? feet in the stands. Bowden stops himself in compromises” power development. En- do we or don’t we want to know who’s us- midsentence and strains on tiptoe to see durance training, he says, “interferes with ing them?—seems to reflect the game’s the figures on the field. strength and power gains unequivocally.” ambivalence about science itself: Steroids Why is it that the game has rejected the But baseball continues to advocate mile are science embraced, but only in the most challenge of the Babe Ruth tests for eighty- runs and seventy-pound biceps curls, and furtive and unsophisticated way. Elliott be- five years? It’s not because science won’t every spring we see pictures of groups of lieves the prevalence of drug use in baseball help clubs find and develop players; it’s ballplayers lumbering through their train- is both an indictment of obsolete training not because science won’t save teams huge sums of money; and it’s not because sci- ence won’t enhance slugging and pitching “We’re going to look back on baseball in five years,” power legally. Baseball men love gambling, it seems—hunches, gut feelings, instincts, says Dr. Marcus Elliott, “and it’s going to be like we superstitions. They love the romance of luck in a game premised on randomness were talking about turn-of-the-century methods.” and failure. But Bowden’s anxious atten- tion to the men on the field at RFK—men ing sessions. “Show me your fastest mile regimens and a catalyst for changing them. whose psychologies and physiologies he runners in baseball,” says Elliott, “and “Most of the best power hitters in baseball knows intimately—proves that no matter I’ll show you athletes who have the worst in the last eight or ten years have been on how much we discover about its players, metabolic and muscle physiology for the juice,” he says matter-of-factly. “And this the game retains its unpredictability and game.” Then, in case I really don’t get the makes the case for better training in power mystery. The more we discover about base- picture of how screwy most baseball play- development.” In the coming years, sluggers ball, the more we recognize the truth of one ers’ training is, he tells me to think of the will need to keep hitting as though they’re of its oldest and dumbest sayings. You hear research this way: “During the o≠-season, juicing, even if they’re not. “There’s no doubt it every April when some TV analyst is tell- one guy goes home and eats Pringles and that smart training beats mediocre training ing you that the Detroit Tigers, currently plays Xbox and goes out twice a week and and steroids,” Elliott says. “Baseball players the best team in baseball, are two years takes a few hacks. Another kid, who’s really always ask about drugs, and I make this case away from contending or that the Cincin- motivated, goes out and runs five miles a to them.” What if they ask about smart train- nati Reds, who lead the National League day. Come , the first guy is ing and drugs? “Then you have to just shrug wild-card race, are hopeless. The saying is: gonna be more powerful. There’s no doubt your shoulders and walk away.” They still have to play the games. As the Na- of it.” Bad training, Elliott says, accounts In his box at RFK Stadium, Bowden is tionals publicist escorts me out of the gen- for the endless recurrence of one particular talking about the future, too, about the day eral manager’s box, I turn to see Bowden, baseball phenomenon wherein a kid who when blood and saliva tests will tell GMs no longer craning his neck, seated finally, throws ninety-two in high school tops out, everything about a player—how well he watching the future unfold. after a year in a minor league conditioning sees, how well he handles pressure, how

COURTESY OF RIGHTVIEWPRO.COM program, at eighty-seven. extroverted he is, even how prone he is to nate penn is a gq sta≠ writer.

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