tk13
03-22-2005, 02:39 AM
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/baseball/mlb/kansas_city_royals/11196730.htm
Pitch man
Royals' Hansen is full of ideas and is not shy about sharing
JOE POSNANSKI
SURPRISE, Ariz. – Pitching, Guy Hansen is saying, comes down to four things. He doesn't seem too sure about that number, actually. You get the sense that if you caught Hansen on a different day, he might say that pitching comes down to seven things or three things or nine things that begin with the letter “Q.”
On this day, though, it is four things.
“The first key to pitching is vision,” Hansen says. “The second thing is direction. The third thing is tempo. And the fourth thing is … the fourth thing is … um …”
Hansen, the Royals' new pitching coach, looks back into the clubhouse and tries to pick up a clue on that fourth thing about pitching.
He is eerily quiet for a long time, but then it's always eerie when Guy Hansen is not talking. He was born for the stage — his mother, Lola Jensen, was a Hollywood dancer — and in his 57 years Hansen has been a dance instructor, golf pro, bartender, talent agent, disco owner, scout, blackjack player, movie editor and public-relations man. He never stopped talking along the way.
Then he found his calling. He became a pitching coach. The words really poured out of him then, faster and hotter than ever before. He could not help himself. He talked about anything that came to mind. He ticked off managers. He was quoted more than Mark Twain. He clashed with certain pitchers. He got himself fired the first time he was a Royals pitching coach. He resigned the second time.
He also talked many pitchers into believing they were better than they knew.
“If you listen to Guy long enough,” former Royals pitcher Mike Magnante once said, “you think you're Sandy Koufax.”
“I've worked with so many pitchers in my life,” Hansen says now as he begins his third run with the Royals. “And I can divide them up into two groups. The first group listens to me. The second group thinks they already have it all figured out. In my experience, only the first group wins.”
He shrugs. This is how Guy Hansen talks.
“Deception!” he suddenly shouts. “That's the fourth thing: Vision, direction, tempo and deception. That's pitching. That's all there is to it.”
“Those sound like life, too,” you tell him.
“No difference,” Guy Hansen says.
***
Pitching key No. 1: Vision.
The thing you no doubt noticed if you have followed the Royals at all this spring is that Guy Hansen always has an answer. The man is never at a loss. Give him a 6-foot-10 hulk named Andrew Sisco — a hard-throwing and star-crossed 22-year-old kid the Chicago Cubs gave up on — and he says, “Give that guy a fosh!” Voila! In 20 minutes, Hansen teaches Sisco how to throw a foshball (a split-fingered change-up), and Sisco gives up just one hit in his first four outings.
“The foshball is his money pitch!” Hansen gushes.
“Sisco has made incredible strides,” Royals general manager Allard Baird says.
This story has been played and replayed again and again all spring. Of course, it's just spring, and there's no telling who will blow up when the real season begins.
Still he gave Mike MacDougal a new grip and control (“He's hitting the glove every time,” Royals catcher John Buck says). He rebuilt Brian Anderson's delivery. He helped Kyle Snyder develop his change-up. He sped up Jimmy Gobble's delivery. He worked with Jeremy Affeldt on not tipping his pitches. Everybody's been touched.
“I will make a pitcher better,” Hansen says bluntly. “That's one thing I know.”
When asked how he developed that skill, he shrugs.
“I've seen an awful lot in my life,” he says.
***
Pitching key No. 2: Direction.
Guy Hansen still holds an NCAA record. He struck out 11 straight hitters when he was a pitcher at UCLA. He didn't throw hard, but he did have a special pitch — sometimes Hansen calls it a knuckle-curve, other times a slip-pitch — that few could hit.
Hansen was drafted by the Royals in the 44th round, which shows you how little everybody thought of him. Soon after he started pro baseball, a pitching coach told him to get rid of his pitch and start trying to throw hard.
So Hansen tried to throw harder. He could not. He quit baseball after four years.
Still, when your mother was a dancer who appeared in movies with Lucille Ball and the Three Stooges, and your father helped conceive “Bob's Big Boy,” you might believe that you are destined for greatness.
Hansen married a beautiful top-10 tennis player named Betty Ann Grubb. He tried for a while to join the PGA Tour. He got divorced. Then, he tried a lot of other things — he tried to be the next Dick Clark, tried promoting exercise guru Jack LaLanne, tried his luck at the blackjack table. He tried.
“I was searching,” he says. One day, when he was in the hospital overnight, his father brought him Bob Shaw's classic book, Pitching. Hansen read it four times. The book is about fundamentals, mechanics, it's very basic. Hansen was mesmerized.
“I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life right then,” he said.
Of course, knowing and doing are two different things.
***
Pitching key No. 3: Tempo.
Hansen began his quest to become a major-league pitching coach in 1981 in Sarasota, Fla. He lasted one year. He tried to coach in 1983 in Butte, Mont. One year. He was too brash. Too outspoken. People told him to concentrate on his scouting — he was a great scout. In one three-year period with the Royals, he signed Bret Saberhagen, Kevin Appier, Cecil Fielder and Jeff Conine. The man knew talent. He knew how to cultivate it.
He just needed an audience.
“Here's the thing about Guy,” says Brian Murphy, the Royals' assistant to the general manager. “If you spent 30 minutes with him — and I'm talking you or anybody — he would have you convinced you could get guys out. That's what he lives for, I think.”
In time, Hansen did work his way up through the minors as a pitching coach. In 1992, in a rather stunning move, he was hired by Hal McRae to be the Royals' pitching coach.
And Hansen immediately became the most quoted guy in the clubhouse. The guy couldn't be boring — he didn't know how. He told one reporter that he would resign if the Royals didn't finish in the top three in ERA. (They finished sixth — Hansen did not resign.)
He told people that Kevin Appier had a chance to be the best pitcher in baseball (Appier finished second and first in ERA the next two years). He promised superstardom, challenged everybody, made a lot of bold predictions and wild statements.
Rule of thumb: Managers tend not to like pitching coaches who talk a lot.
“If I could go back,” Hansen says, “I would probably not say everything I said.”
McRae fired Hansen after the 1993 season. Two years later, Hansen came back to be bullpen coach for manager Bob Boone. After two seasons with Boone and then manager Tony Muser, he resigned. He certainly was going to be let go anyway. Other coaches insisted he was spying for management.
Hansen denied it. But he was still out of work.
He went to scout with the Atlanta Braves. He became a pitching coach for the Class AAA team in Richmond, Va. He said he was happy.
In his heart, he wanted one more shot at the big leagues.
“I've been trying to get Guy back here ever since I became general manager,” Baird says. “I don't know what happened in the past, and you know what? I don't care. I see Guy Hansen and all I think is this: ‘This guy is going to make our baseball team a whole lot better.'”
***
Pitching key No. 4: Deception.
There seems to be a good reason that deception was the one key Guy Hansen could not remember. He's never been much good at it. He comes at people straight on. He says exactly what he's thinking. He does not couch his words to protect other people's feelings. He does not back down easily, even now.
Take his clash with Zack Greinke this camp. Greinke is 21 and a remarkable talent. Many people in the organization think that he's been coddled because of his age and ability. Well, Hansen saw that Greinke was standing all the way to the left of the rubber. He thinks Greinke should move over 5 inches.
Greinke, who has not had many people tell him what to do, said no.
Hansen will not back down.
“I'm not going to tiptoe around this kid,” he says. “If they want a babysitter, they got the wrong pitching coach, I can promise you that. I'm here to coach. If Zack would just listen, he'd know that I can help him.”
Hansen has no use for guys who won't listen. He figures he helped Bret Saberhagen win two Cy Youngs, worked with David Cone and Kevin Appier and has talked pitching with John Smoltz and Greg Maddux. Hansen figures he knows something.
Now, he calls Royals pitcher Mike Wood “Mad Dog” because he sees him as a Greg Maddux clone. He says Denny Bautista is the most intimidating pitcher he ever saw. He says Greinke — “If the kid will just listen” — could win multiple Cy Young Awards. He thinks Jeremy Affeldt is “another Barry Zito with a better fastball” and Nate Field is “the kind of guy you win championships with.”
Guy Hansen sees Cy Young where others see Cyclops.
“It will take time,” Hansen says. But this is going to be one of the best pitching staffs in baseball.”
Pitching, Guy Hansen says, comes down to four things. And then, suddenly, Hansen remembers a fifth thing. A fifth key.
Hansen is 57, and he still doesn't have much deception in his pitching. He still talks loud and free. Reporters still surround him. Pitchers, the ones who listen, still love him. And he can still get on people's nerves.
But he does believe that this will work. Something is different this time.
He says the fifth key to pitching is luck. And Guy Hansen feels lucky.
Pitch man
Royals' Hansen is full of ideas and is not shy about sharing
JOE POSNANSKI
SURPRISE, Ariz. – Pitching, Guy Hansen is saying, comes down to four things. He doesn't seem too sure about that number, actually. You get the sense that if you caught Hansen on a different day, he might say that pitching comes down to seven things or three things or nine things that begin with the letter “Q.”
On this day, though, it is four things.
“The first key to pitching is vision,” Hansen says. “The second thing is direction. The third thing is tempo. And the fourth thing is … the fourth thing is … um …”
Hansen, the Royals' new pitching coach, looks back into the clubhouse and tries to pick up a clue on that fourth thing about pitching.
He is eerily quiet for a long time, but then it's always eerie when Guy Hansen is not talking. He was born for the stage — his mother, Lola Jensen, was a Hollywood dancer — and in his 57 years Hansen has been a dance instructor, golf pro, bartender, talent agent, disco owner, scout, blackjack player, movie editor and public-relations man. He never stopped talking along the way.
Then he found his calling. He became a pitching coach. The words really poured out of him then, faster and hotter than ever before. He could not help himself. He talked about anything that came to mind. He ticked off managers. He was quoted more than Mark Twain. He clashed with certain pitchers. He got himself fired the first time he was a Royals pitching coach. He resigned the second time.
He also talked many pitchers into believing they were better than they knew.
“If you listen to Guy long enough,” former Royals pitcher Mike Magnante once said, “you think you're Sandy Koufax.”
“I've worked with so many pitchers in my life,” Hansen says now as he begins his third run with the Royals. “And I can divide them up into two groups. The first group listens to me. The second group thinks they already have it all figured out. In my experience, only the first group wins.”
He shrugs. This is how Guy Hansen talks.
“Deception!” he suddenly shouts. “That's the fourth thing: Vision, direction, tempo and deception. That's pitching. That's all there is to it.”
“Those sound like life, too,” you tell him.
“No difference,” Guy Hansen says.
***
Pitching key No. 1: Vision.
The thing you no doubt noticed if you have followed the Royals at all this spring is that Guy Hansen always has an answer. The man is never at a loss. Give him a 6-foot-10 hulk named Andrew Sisco — a hard-throwing and star-crossed 22-year-old kid the Chicago Cubs gave up on — and he says, “Give that guy a fosh!” Voila! In 20 minutes, Hansen teaches Sisco how to throw a foshball (a split-fingered change-up), and Sisco gives up just one hit in his first four outings.
“The foshball is his money pitch!” Hansen gushes.
“Sisco has made incredible strides,” Royals general manager Allard Baird says.
This story has been played and replayed again and again all spring. Of course, it's just spring, and there's no telling who will blow up when the real season begins.
Still he gave Mike MacDougal a new grip and control (“He's hitting the glove every time,” Royals catcher John Buck says). He rebuilt Brian Anderson's delivery. He helped Kyle Snyder develop his change-up. He sped up Jimmy Gobble's delivery. He worked with Jeremy Affeldt on not tipping his pitches. Everybody's been touched.
“I will make a pitcher better,” Hansen says bluntly. “That's one thing I know.”
When asked how he developed that skill, he shrugs.
“I've seen an awful lot in my life,” he says.
***
Pitching key No. 2: Direction.
Guy Hansen still holds an NCAA record. He struck out 11 straight hitters when he was a pitcher at UCLA. He didn't throw hard, but he did have a special pitch — sometimes Hansen calls it a knuckle-curve, other times a slip-pitch — that few could hit.
Hansen was drafted by the Royals in the 44th round, which shows you how little everybody thought of him. Soon after he started pro baseball, a pitching coach told him to get rid of his pitch and start trying to throw hard.
So Hansen tried to throw harder. He could not. He quit baseball after four years.
Still, when your mother was a dancer who appeared in movies with Lucille Ball and the Three Stooges, and your father helped conceive “Bob's Big Boy,” you might believe that you are destined for greatness.
Hansen married a beautiful top-10 tennis player named Betty Ann Grubb. He tried for a while to join the PGA Tour. He got divorced. Then, he tried a lot of other things — he tried to be the next Dick Clark, tried promoting exercise guru Jack LaLanne, tried his luck at the blackjack table. He tried.
“I was searching,” he says. One day, when he was in the hospital overnight, his father brought him Bob Shaw's classic book, Pitching. Hansen read it four times. The book is about fundamentals, mechanics, it's very basic. Hansen was mesmerized.
“I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life right then,” he said.
Of course, knowing and doing are two different things.
***
Pitching key No. 3: Tempo.
Hansen began his quest to become a major-league pitching coach in 1981 in Sarasota, Fla. He lasted one year. He tried to coach in 1983 in Butte, Mont. One year. He was too brash. Too outspoken. People told him to concentrate on his scouting — he was a great scout. In one three-year period with the Royals, he signed Bret Saberhagen, Kevin Appier, Cecil Fielder and Jeff Conine. The man knew talent. He knew how to cultivate it.
He just needed an audience.
“Here's the thing about Guy,” says Brian Murphy, the Royals' assistant to the general manager. “If you spent 30 minutes with him — and I'm talking you or anybody — he would have you convinced you could get guys out. That's what he lives for, I think.”
In time, Hansen did work his way up through the minors as a pitching coach. In 1992, in a rather stunning move, he was hired by Hal McRae to be the Royals' pitching coach.
And Hansen immediately became the most quoted guy in the clubhouse. The guy couldn't be boring — he didn't know how. He told one reporter that he would resign if the Royals didn't finish in the top three in ERA. (They finished sixth — Hansen did not resign.)
He told people that Kevin Appier had a chance to be the best pitcher in baseball (Appier finished second and first in ERA the next two years). He promised superstardom, challenged everybody, made a lot of bold predictions and wild statements.
Rule of thumb: Managers tend not to like pitching coaches who talk a lot.
“If I could go back,” Hansen says, “I would probably not say everything I said.”
McRae fired Hansen after the 1993 season. Two years later, Hansen came back to be bullpen coach for manager Bob Boone. After two seasons with Boone and then manager Tony Muser, he resigned. He certainly was going to be let go anyway. Other coaches insisted he was spying for management.
Hansen denied it. But he was still out of work.
He went to scout with the Atlanta Braves. He became a pitching coach for the Class AAA team in Richmond, Va. He said he was happy.
In his heart, he wanted one more shot at the big leagues.
“I've been trying to get Guy back here ever since I became general manager,” Baird says. “I don't know what happened in the past, and you know what? I don't care. I see Guy Hansen and all I think is this: ‘This guy is going to make our baseball team a whole lot better.'”
***
Pitching key No. 4: Deception.
There seems to be a good reason that deception was the one key Guy Hansen could not remember. He's never been much good at it. He comes at people straight on. He says exactly what he's thinking. He does not couch his words to protect other people's feelings. He does not back down easily, even now.
Take his clash with Zack Greinke this camp. Greinke is 21 and a remarkable talent. Many people in the organization think that he's been coddled because of his age and ability. Well, Hansen saw that Greinke was standing all the way to the left of the rubber. He thinks Greinke should move over 5 inches.
Greinke, who has not had many people tell him what to do, said no.
Hansen will not back down.
“I'm not going to tiptoe around this kid,” he says. “If they want a babysitter, they got the wrong pitching coach, I can promise you that. I'm here to coach. If Zack would just listen, he'd know that I can help him.”
Hansen has no use for guys who won't listen. He figures he helped Bret Saberhagen win two Cy Youngs, worked with David Cone and Kevin Appier and has talked pitching with John Smoltz and Greg Maddux. Hansen figures he knows something.
Now, he calls Royals pitcher Mike Wood “Mad Dog” because he sees him as a Greg Maddux clone. He says Denny Bautista is the most intimidating pitcher he ever saw. He says Greinke — “If the kid will just listen” — could win multiple Cy Young Awards. He thinks Jeremy Affeldt is “another Barry Zito with a better fastball” and Nate Field is “the kind of guy you win championships with.”
Guy Hansen sees Cy Young where others see Cyclops.
“It will take time,” Hansen says. But this is going to be one of the best pitching staffs in baseball.”
Pitching, Guy Hansen says, comes down to four things. And then, suddenly, Hansen remembers a fifth thing. A fifth key.
Hansen is 57, and he still doesn't have much deception in his pitching. He still talks loud and free. Reporters still surround him. Pitchers, the ones who listen, still love him. And he can still get on people's nerves.
But he does believe that this will work. Something is different this time.
He says the fifth key to pitching is luck. And Guy Hansen feels lucky.