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Whatever the outcome in October, Carew's quest for the elusive .400 is a welcome and joyous event for baseball, helping to turn the sport away from its fractious present and back to its roots. After a generation of musical franchises, a decade of labor unrest in the locker room, a time of free agents and frostbitten World Series in mid-October, baseball sorely needs to get down to basics. Carew is the right man at the right time, a modern version of Wee Willie ("Hit 'em where they ain't") Keeler pushing the ball past grasping gloves, a Paul Waner incarnate lashing out hits to every field. Rod Carew—stirring the statisticians, enthralling the fans, enlivening the game, making memories.
Like Williams, Carew can tell with a single heft if his bat is minutely out of order. Williams once lifted six bats, one by one, then unhesitatingly picked out the weapon that was a half-ounce heavier than the others. Carew sent a recent shipment of bats back to Hillerich & Bradsby, maker of the famed Louisville Slugger. His exasperated explanation: "Every one was the wrong weight, and the handles were all too big." Interpretation: the wood was not shaved within the proper tiny fraction of an inch of perfection. Like all the other great hitters, Carew scrupulously cares for his bats. He bathes them with alcohol, removing the buildup of pine tar that is used to tighten the bond between hand and wood. "I can't stand a dirty bat," he explains. "Some guys leave pine tar on their bats and never clean them off. I can't understand that. How can they get a feel for the wood?"
Bats are so valuable to Carew—and Carew's bat so valuable to the Twins —that a locked closet next to the clubhouse sauna is reserved for his lumber. The heat of the sauna "bakes out the bad wood," as Carew phrases it. He also keeps a supply of bats in his locker stall, safely distant from the communal bin in the tunnel leading to the dugout. "I see guys bang their bats against the dugout steps after they make an out. That bruises them, makes them weaker. I couldn't do that. I baby my bats, treat them like my kids, because using a bat is how I make my living."
Carew is a fleet runner who legs out a good percentage of his hits each year. His speed provides a sure-fire method of breaking a slump: bunting. In fact, he lays down bunts better than anyone since Phil Rizzuto. Once in spring training he challenged a teammate to toss a sweater onto the infield, then rolled a bunt into its enveloping folds. The sweater was moved; he bunted dead center again. More than a dozen times, first on the third-base line, then the first-base side, he put the ball on target.