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That’s what happens when Hunter sprints horizontally to greet a
baseball’s flight toward the alley. Or when he goes to the wall,
reaches up and over, and removes a home run from the books.
“Then I look away,” he said. “I don’t want to tick ’em off too much. I
remember last year, when I took one away from Jim Thome of the White
Sox. I’m walking down the street that night in Minneapolis and Thome
sees me. He starts yelling, ‘Hey! Some of us have to eat!’ ”
Yeah, but Hunter does, too, and he has built an $18-million-a-year
deal out of his mastery of the immeasurable.
But Hunter is as good as the Angels have had, on ground that Jim
Edmonds, Darin Erstad, Fred Lynn, Devon White and Gary Pettis used to
work.
Hunter was a shortstop in high school and wanted to be Shawon Dunston,
but he played center field one day and took away two homers and
another extra-base hit. The scouts saw him, and that was it.
Hunter won seven consecutive Gold Gloves for the Twins. The nation got
a clue when he stymied Barry Bonds at the 2002 All-Star Game. He
prizes those moments, loves to go back and find the wall and place the
big muscles in his back against it, so he won’t get hurt, and then
leap and snatch.
“Defense is a lost art,” he said. “People can’t get fantasy-league
points out of it. But if you drive in 80 or 90 and you take away, say,
50, that puts it in perspective.”
Hunter has driven in 79 and hit .281, 10 points higher than his career
average. He also has played a team-high 143 games and served as the
every-day beacon in the clubhouse.
Beyond that, it’s difficult to calculate the reach of an elite center
fielder because it goes into so many areas. Corner outfielders can
play closer to the line. Middle infielders have less responsibility.
And pitchers walk a little taller when Hunter cradles a double in his
glove.
“If I had any advice for a young center fielder it would be to study
the hitters,” Hunter said. “By now I’ve got a little cheat sheet in my
head. But you look at the way they approach the at-bat, look at where
our catchers are setting up. And you can move a step or two and get a
better jump.
“We have spray charts for each hitter. A guy like (Detroit’s) Placido
Polanco is going to take a short swing and he’s trying to dump the
ball into right-center. He’s not going to hit the ball over your head.
A guy like Thome or Ken Griffey Jr., sometimes he’ll take a big swing
and hit it off the end of his bat, and those are the tough plays.
“Then you have to know how many outs are there, where are the runners,
where’s the cutoff men, who are the fast runners — and you
process that in a short period of time. It’s instinct by now, but
that’s the tough part. That’s why you don’t just go out and play it
because you’re fast. I mean, I’m not Kenny Lofton. I’m not doing it
with great speed.”
The routes determine everything. As a young Twin, Hunter chased down
everything in batting practice and was gasping by game time. Then
coach Jerry White told him to cool down, get himself a nice patch of
sunlight in center field. By projecting where the balls would land and
then adjusting his eyes to where they did, Hunter could learn the
correct angles.
“I see a young guy who takes the wrong route on a ball, has such good
speed that he can recover and run down the ball, dives and makes the
catch, and everybody says he’s a great center fielder,” Hunter said.
“I say, no, in my book he’s a bad center fielder. He’s going to get in
trouble. Kirby Puckett used to tell me to take that straight angle
into the gap, that you’ll get a lot more balls that way, and he was
right.”
The risks are there. Mike Cameron, the Milwaukee Brewer whom Hunter
calls the most underrated center fielder, nearly lost his career in a
brutal smash-up with teammate Carlos Beltran.
There was the minor league night in Portland, Maine, when a wall
knocked out Hunter and sent him to the hospital, and teammate Jacque
Jones had to pick grass out of his mouth.
More often, there’s the smashed helmet and the skyward epithet, noises
that bring one sneaky peek from Torii Hunter, and a smile that he
won’t set free until the dugout.
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