“Books on Deck” is using the time during a delayed start to the baseball season to showcase many of the great baseball books that are being released in the spring and summer of 2020. Next up is Jared Diamond from the Wall Street Journal with his book, “Swing Kings”. Jared is the WSJ’s national baseball reporter and a former beat reporter for both the Mets and the Yankees.
After a 2019 season that saw major league batters shatter the all-time, single-season home run record, “Swing Kings” follows the path of a few hitting gurus that are currently en vogue such as Craig Wallenbrock (who has taught the likes of Chase Utley and JD Martinez), Richard Schenck (the private instructor for Aaron Judge) and Doug Latta (who helped resurrect the career of Justin Turner).
Diamond also details how two of baseball’s top sluggers, Kris Bryant and Joey Gallo, learned how to use launch angle as kids learning from Kris’s father, Mike, who read Ted Williams’s book about hitting in the 1970s.
“Ted Williams gave everyone the answers to the test before taking it.” Diamond said on the show. “It never worked out for Mike Bryant, but he vowed that if he ever had a child, he would teach him how to hit like Ted Williams. Lo and behold, Kris Bryant becomes a star, and Mike becomes the hitting guru of Las Vegas.”
Williams wrote his book in 1970 and yet it wasn’t until the 2010s that his hitting values became more widely taught. Diamond expresses how Charley Lau, the first celebrity hitting coach, kept the traditional hitting thoughts alive in the 1980s through pupils like George Brett and Wade Boggs.
As part of the home run revolution, a couple former Mets were directly impacted as Justin Turner and Daniel Murphy both became stars implementing these new ideas which were first brought around the club by Marlon Byrd in 2013.
“Byrd had spent the whole offseason revamping his swing with Doug Latta,” Diamond said. “It was weird to most players including Murphy but some of them were fascinated by it, and that included Justin Turner. To his credit, Turner decided to hear him out and spent the next winter working with Latta.”
As Turner moved on the Los Angeles Dodgers, his career was totally resurrected as he’s become an All-Star and three-time top 15 MVP finisher. He’s one of many ballplayers who have changed their swings for the better over the last several seasons, guided by one-time outcasts who are now so widely welcomed with open arms.