Flirting With .400

Not long ago, Ted Williams motioned aside a photographer. “I got a piece of advice for you, young man,” said Williams, pointing his finger, speaking each word slowly and distinctly, sounding like John Wayne.

“Yes, Mr. Williams.”

“Quit your job, and follow that kid Nomar.”

In a season of home runs, Boston’s Nomar Garciaparra reached the .400 plateau Monday night. Colorado’s Larry Walker, three years ago, was the last player to hit .400 this late in the season. But sooner or later during a season, anyone who has threatened .400 since Williams hit .406 in 1941 has wilted from the pace. George Brett. Rod Carew. John Olerud. Tony Gwynn. Walker.

Williams has said that Garciaparra can do it. Williams likes the Boston shortstop’s “mechanics.” And he’ll talk about Garciaparra and his .400 possibilities at length. Williams, who can be effusive when praising players he’s fond of, said last year of Garciaparra: “He’s got a chance to be the greatest player to play the game.”

Garciaparra, however, will not talk about .400--and as little about himself as possible.

“Numbers are irrelevant to me,” he told reporters after reaching .400 against Montreal. “They don’t mean anything. I never liked them. I don’t need a stat to tell me if I had a good game.”

Like Williams, current Red Sox players also believe that Garciaparra can sustain his average.

“He’s been doing it for four months,” said Boston closer Derek Lowe. “What’s going to change over the next two months? He can hit every pitch. He’s taking a walk more than he used to. He’s been very selective. He’s a tremendous hitter and he’s only getting better every month. He’s so confident. He kind of takes things in stride, and he’s enjoying the season he’s having.”

Garciaparra, who will turn 27 Sunday, keeps hitting for higher averages: .306 as 1997 American League rookie of the year, .323 in 1998 and a league-leading .357 last year. Last season, he hit .196 in interleague play; this season he led the majors in batting during interleague play at .468. He hits with power. He hits to all fields.

But if he is to hit .400 this season, or any time, Garciaparra, who has often been a first-ball hitter, will have to increase his walks. He’s been doing that lately. He walked only 35 and 33 times his first two seasons, but increased his walks to 51 a year ago. This season, he’s at 33. No hitter was more selective than Williams. In 1941, he walked 145 times while striking out only 27. But notably as Williams did, Garciaparra has been cutting his strikeouts--from 92 to 62 to 39 to a current 25.

“He’ll hit a lot of bad pitches, maybe not strikes, but he can still get hits on them,” teammate Brian Daubach said. “Like (Montreal’s) Vladimir Guerrero can. They can hit bad pitches for hits. That’s maybe why he has a chance. Of course, he’s really fast. He gets a fair amount of infield hits, whereas maybe George Brett wouldn’t get those kind of hits. Or Olerud, he doesn’t get many infield hits. Nomar gets infield hits; he’s so fast and he always goes hard.”

Garciaparra almost is a born hitter.

“My dad taught me how to hit. He taught me everything about the game,” he said one recent afternoon, talking about his boyhood days in Southern California. “I just loved playing. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t worry. I wasn’t a power hitter. I just went and made contact, that’s all I did. I knew how to play every single position.”

Garciaparra played baseball, soccer and football as a wide receiver through high school. “I’m a big soccer fan,” he said.

He was first drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in the fifth round in 1991, but instead enrolled at Georgia Tech. “They did a good recruiting job on me,” he said. “I went with a gut feeling.”

And he clearly benefited from three years there.

“Everybody’s different, but for me going to college was the smartest thing I could do. It helped me mature. I knew when I got out of college that I was ready for pro ball. I knew it. All I had to do was focus on baseball. I didn’t have to worry about outside interference. I didn’t have to worry about, well, what’s it like living on my own? A lot of people who come out of high school, all of a sudden they didn’t realize, you’ve got to live on your own, you’ve got to pay your bills. I already knew how to handle that.”

After an outstanding freshman season, Garciaparra played on the U.S. Olympic team in Barcelona, Spain. He wouldn’t trade the experience, but it did, in a way, cause him to slump as a sophomore.

“It humbled me a lot,” he said. “I had gone from college ball to another level but I was the youngest on the team. The guys I played with were already drafted or they were coming back (to college) to get drafted. I was only a freshman and the only one where the next year didn’t mean anything. I kind of went back a level and I was just going through the motions and I played awful. I realized nothing’s going to be given to you, you have to work at it. It gave me a boost to work at it and have a good year the following year.”

He did. As a junior he hit .427 and the Red Sox drafted him 12th in the first round in June 1994. His ascent to the majors was swift: Class A Florida State League in ‘94, Class AA Eastern League the next season and Class AAA Pawtucket for 1996, called up Aug. 31.

In 1997, he set a home run record for rookie shortstops with 30 and hit safely in 30 straight games, a rookie record. Having earned the minimum $150,000, he signed a five-year contract worth $23.25 million before the 1998 season.

And that’s how it’s been.

Garciaparra hit 35 homers and drove in 122 runs in 1998. In one game last season, he hit three home runs, including two grand slams. All this, and he’s got a special fan in Williams.

“I talk to him every year,” Garciaparra said. “I visit him. It’s always nice. He’s like my friend, that’s what’s great about it. A good friend. He loves baseball and he loves talking about it and he loves talking about hitting.”