Baseball

Easier Does It
Still intense, but not so tense, the Angels' Darin Erstad is on a hot streak

As Darin Erstad prepared to step into the cage for batting practice at Comiskey Park last Saturday morning, a fan behind home plate shouted, "Hey, Darin! I added you to my fantasy team last night!"

"Last night?" answered Erstad, who was first in the American League in hitting (.472) and second in on-base percentage (.509) through Sunday. "Good tiling it wasn't last year."

Indeed. Erstad spent 1999 in a slump, finishing with career lows in average (.253), home runs (13) and RBIs (53), and a career high in strikeouts (101). "Pitchers flat-out used me last year," says Erstad, the first player taken in the '95 draft and an All-Star in '98. "I was terrible."

Plus, in past years Erstad was generally in no mood for pregame chitchat. "Right before BP, Darin starts to dial himself in," says Angels shortstop Gary DiSarcina. "Everybody leaves him alone."

"I get in my own little world," admits Erstad, "but I'm getting better, making an effort to be more open, to talk to my teammates."

If his fast start at the plate-through Sunday he had hit safely in all but one of the Angels' games—wasn't indication enough, Erstad's relative joviality confirmed that he has rebounded from a nightmarish year and a half. His slump began late in 1998; he hit .313 with 18 home runs and an on-base percentage of .362 before the All-Star break that season but sank to .260, one and .335 in the second half. The slide continued last year, and the longer it went on, the more tense he got. "There wasn't one day that I felt comfortable at the plate," says Erstad, a leftfielder who played much of the year with hamstring and knee injuries. "I wasn't running well, and when my game's not at full speed, everything feels off."

Erstad arrived in camp this year armed with videotapes of his at bats at Nebraska—where he was an All-America and set a school record for career hits—and sat down with Anaheim's new hitting coach, Mickey Hatcher. "Spring training was the first time Mickey saw my swing, and if I was doing something wrong, I didn't want him to think, Oh, that's how this guy hits," says Erstad. "Those tapes show how I looked when I felt comfortable."

Hatcher helped Erstad simplify his swing and got him to wave the bat below his waist before the pitcher delivers, which keeps him from tensing at the plate. "Last year he was thinking about too many things," says Hatcher, who likens Erstad's intensity to that of his former Dodgers teammate Kirk Gibson. "One day his stride, the next day Ills hands, the next day something else. I told him this year there'd be no tinkering after spring training."

"My problem is that I get too fired up, like I'm playing football," says Erstad, who was a punter and placekicker for the Corn-huskers' 1994 national championship team. "I decided after last season that this isn't life and death, that the only person I have to prove something to is myself."