Liner notes

Sheffield's sweet swing just not suited to Derby

CHICAGO -- Gary Sheffield swings hard. Real hard. There may not be a harder swinger in the major leagues than Gary Sheffield.

When Sheffield swings, pitchers flinch. They can't help it. Even when he doesn't connect, they flinch.

When Sheffield flicks his bat around and starts his viciously quick swing in motion, people gasp, mothers grab their babies, preachers fall to their knees and the ball itself, if you listen hard enough, lets out a little scream.

Sheffield, the Atlanta Braves' All-Star right fielder, has this tomahawk chop kind of motion when he swings, like he's really angry at a really thick piece of cordwood. The ball doesn't stand a chance. Austin Powers never swung that hard.

None of that, of course, makes Sheffield a classic home run hitter.

He can hit a home run -- he can hit a lot of them, truth be told -- but Sheffield's swing is built more for screamers to the gap than it is for towering homers into the bleachers. He's much more likely to rope a pitch off the wall or down the line than he is to send some majestic moonball into the cheap seats.

But there he was Monday night, a hard swinger amid all the sweet swings in Major League Baseball's Home Run Derby. Understand, Sheffield wasn't the league's top choice to take part in this exhibition. If Sheffield's friend, Barry Bonds, would have said "OK," or if Sammy Sosa would have been around, Sheffield probably would have watched the thing like everyone else.

Instead, Sheffield found himself trying to do something he never tries to do in front of a full house at Chicago's U.S. Cellular Field and millions more watching on television.

Trying to hit home runs ... it goes against everything Sheffield believes in as a hitting philosophy.

"When you swing down on the ball," he said earlier Monday, "you have a better chance of getting hits."

Sheffield, like any good hitter, cares about getting hits, not hitting home runs. He's never tried to alter his swing to get a little more air under his line drives. He figures smacking a ball through the hole between short and third is infinitely more desirable than launching a skyscraper to the warning track. He has a .297 career average to prove his way works.

He also had 42 home runs back in 1996 with the Florida Marlins, and 43 with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2000. That's a lot, but those aren't Sosa numbers. Those aren't Bonds numbers.

And that's all perfectly fine with Sheffield. He goes up to the plate trying to crunch the ball as hard as he can. And when he does, which is often, he doesn't expect it to go into the seats like those guys.

"Sometimes, you think you've lined out to left field and it's a home run. Those are the type of home runs I hit," he says. "That's why you'll never see me hit it and drop my bat like I know I got it.

"Most of the times I'm running too hard trying to get to second base."

His first home run in the Derby on Monday was classic Sheffield, a line drive that barely cleared the wall in left and dove into the bullpen. His second was a liner into the bleachers that scared the sox off several Chicago fans.

His last two homers were higher, really un-Sheffield like.

Everyone, I guess, misses once in a while.

"The ball just rises. The shortstop will jump for it and it'll go 20 rows into left center," says one of Sheffield's teammates, All-Star second baseman Marcus Giles. "Everyone just kind of looks at each other in the dugout. [Braves manager] Bobby Cox ... he says he's never seen balls come off the bat like that."

Sheffield didn't make it out of the first round of the Home Run Derby on Monday. He hit a lot of line drive outs to go along with the four home runs. He watched as one of the game's sweet swingers, Jason Giambi, put on a show in the first round, and as Albert Pujols -- a player who Sheffield says swings like him -- blasted 14 home runs in the second round.

In the final, Anaheim's Garret Anderson, who probably falls somewhere in between a real sweet swinger and a real strong one, outlasted Pujols for the title.

Tuesday night, Sheffield will start in right field for the National League and hit fifth, right behind buddy Bonds. Watch him. Watch him swing. Marvel at the power. But cover the kids' eyes. It can be scary.

And if one of Sheffield's line drives happens to clear the fence, don't expect him to watch it. He'll be too busy trying to get to second.

John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com.

Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.

 

Related information

Stories

2003 Home Run Derby Counter Anderson edges Pujols to win HR Derby

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video