All he has to do is be on track, stay inside the ball and it goes 550 feet. He was non-analytic on purpose, but no longer. When he came up, he didn't want to know who was pitching or think about his last at-bat. He's doing that now, and it's a kick for some of us who saw him early. Through 1996, McGwire's favorite pitch to hit for a home run was the first one.
Pitchers try a variety of stratagems-none too successfully.
Conventional wisdom is to throw McGwire fastballs up and in. White Sox pitching coach Nardi Contreras says Parque wanted to entice McGwire to fish for sinkers or changeups away. At the time, McGwire was hitting .205 against lefthanders. Contreras and Parque believed he was vulnerable to slow stuff that from a lefthander moves away from righthanded hitters. Cardinals hitting coach Dave Parker claims McGwire guesses correctly 85 percent of the time, a figure other hitting experts question.