When It Clicked

Paul Konerko, Chicago White Sox

White Sox first basebman Paul Konerko is known as a streaky hitter, prone to long stretches of utter hopelessness at the plate followed by long stretches where it seems as though every swing produces a scorched line drive or towering home run. When he gets in one of his slumps, he sometimes returns to some advice given to him 12 years ago by a minor league manager.

"You get a lot of advice along the way. You want to be [thought of as] coachable, but you want to pick and choose the stuff that works. In Double-A, John Shelby [now the Baltimore Orioles' first base coach] was my manager, and it was something as simple as -- I was struggling real bad, swinging at a lot of bad pitches. [Shelby] said, 'What's your favorite pitch to hit?' I said, 'Well, I like a ball out over the plate, a little [bit] away from me.' He said, 'No, what kind of pitch do you like to hit -- curve, slider, fastball?' I said, 'I like to hit fastballs.' And he said, 'Well, swing at those.' And it sounds kind of simple, but for the rest of that year and the next year it kind of got me through. It basically dialed me in to where you forget everything else -- just look for a fastball to hit, and hit it.

"Every player will tell you there's a swing thought or a motto for that year -- God knows I've had a lot of them. But that's a simple one. Sometimes you get so deep into the science of it, or the mechanics of it, you really need to get back and say, 'Okay, this [pitcher] has a baseball in his hand, and he's going to throw it towards me, and I've got a bat, and I'm going to try to hit it.' Basically no thoughts at all. And other times you can go up there with two or three swing thoughts.

"There's always adjusting. It's a battle every day. The bottom line is, either you don't have it and you're fighting like hell to get it, or you have it and you're fighting like hell to keep it. So either way you're fighting like hell."

-- Interview by Dave Sheinin