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Counsell swings with style
My new favorite player in this baseball fall is multipurpose infielder Craig Counsell of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Why so? I like the way he swings a bat ... OK, I like the weird way he swings a bat. He has a stance that he must have invented with paper clips on a rainy afternoon, maybe doodled on the back of an envelope during a long and boring phone call. His hands are high. The bat looks like it's welded onto the back of his helmet to serve as a lightning rod or something. His body's twisted, turned, corkscrewed into the ground. Hitting a baseball seems like the absolute last thing he can do from this position. He's beautiful. He has style. That's the thing. Style. I have always been a style man. Go back to Stan Musial, another corkscrew, go back to Yaz, hands held high to the heavens, to Sadaharu Oh doing a karate kick to get into the flow. Style. Watch these guys hit against Warren Spahn or Juan Marichal, with those high leg kicks, Luis Tiant with a corkscrew on the mound. Bring out the individualism everywhere. Weirdness that gets the job done. Style. Craig Counsell: don't listen to those announcers who say you're doing all the wrong things. Do what you do. Do it well. Just get ready in case next week or so you have to face the New York Yankees and El Duque and that little leg-tuck, piston number that he does in his motion. What's the deal with that? Leigh Montville appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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