This is kind of a complicated story and I'm not sure anybody cares, but the Royals' hitting coach of that era, Charlie Lau, became a revered figure in baseball for a few years. He was the original hitting guru, probably the first ex-player who WASN'T a great hitter who nonetheless became famous as a great hitting coach.
Lau, and I am not in any way trying to put him down, but he had a kind of schtick; he taught this principle and that principle and the other one, and he tried, to a certain extent, to put everybody into his mold, which is (in modern baseball) very much frowned upon. Coaches aren't supposed to do that, but his stuff worked for George Brett and Hal McRae and probably a few other guys, and helped the team.
But it wasn't working for Willie Wilson, who was hitting barely over .200 (career) more than 150 games into his major league career, and in danger of having his career fail. Herzog fired Lau as his hitting coach after the 1978 season, in part because he didn't like what Lau was doing with Willie Wilson. Finally, in May, 1979, Whitey Herzog called Willie to the ballpark for a morning workout session, just Whitey and Willie and support staff. Whitey told Willie that he wanted him to forget that stuff that Charlie Lau had been teaching him; it wasn't working for him. He wanted him to focus on just using his wrists, which were very strong, and just drop the bat head on the ball. Just wait for the pitch, identify the pitch, and put the head of the bat in front of it.
This worked unbelievably well; Wilson was hitting .355 on June 6 (1979), and of course had 230 hits in 1980. He was essentially doing what Rod Carew did: just swat the ball over the infield, in front of the outfield. Just flip the ball over the infielders; that's all there is to it. It worked for him.
Whitey got fired after the 1979 season, and the Royals went through several hitting coaches over the next several seasons. In 1984 they hired Lee May as their hitting coach. May was a very likeable, charismatic man and, in part because of that, the worst hitting coach in the history of the world. Wilson had had an off year in 1983. May told Wilson that he wanted him to hit the ball harder, and showed him how to do it. And he did; after May worked with him, Willie hit the ball MUCH harder for the rest of his career.
Unfortunately, when he hit the ball harder, it would hang in the air longer, somebody would run under it and catch it. Wilson's average dropped to the .260s, .270s, and stayed there for the rest of his career.
It always amazed me that Wilson could not see what he was doing wrong, but he was proud of hitting the ball hard, and he wanted to continue to hit the ball hard--which he did, for the rest of his career. It cost him a Hall of Fame career. If he had just stayed with the Carew-type approach that he used from 1979 to 1982, I have no doubt that he would be in the Hall of Fame today. But he preferred to hit the ball hard.
9-14-20
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