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THEY MUST BE GIANTS. "Guys today are bigger, stronger and faster," says Thomas (6 ft. 5 in., 257 lbs., minus 4% body fat). "You see guys hitting the weight room so much, you'd think they were football players. That's a big trend, and it works. Hitters are now strong enough to totally dominate baseball."
SOME GUYS ARE JUST LUCKY. "Sometimes luck can be as important as talent in this game," says O'Neill, referring to a rule that also governs the game of life. "A hitter has to realize that. Last week I was hitting the ball hard, and it was falling in. Last night I hit the ball hard, and they caught it." Wee Willie Keeler's dictum, enunciated nearly a century ago, still applies: Hit 'em where they ain't. And how does a ballplayer do that? With a great deal of skill and a little luck.
EVOLUTION OF THE SPECIES. "Guys are doing more preparation and conditioning," says Yanks hitting coach Rick Down. "Maybe they're just getting better."
Fans might sneer at that. Oh, they enjoy the onslaught -- catching those souvenir gopher balls, urging the home team on to a nine-run rally in the last at-bat. Yet they suspect that the quality of baseball is declining and that players make too much money at a kid's game.
O.K. -- granted. So why can't Michael Jordan hit the ball? The world's greatest athlete, alleviating his basketball burnout playing rightfield for the Birmingham Barons, is batting a measly .200 and hasn't hit a home run. Maybe the pitching is better in Alabama, or the ball is looser, or the umps meaner, or the wind blows in. Maybe Michael is just unlucky.
Or maybe hitting a baseball, even this season, is still a thing of beauty and a damn hard way to make a living. Soon the helium averages will drop, and good platesmen will stumble into month-long slumps. By October, O'Neill predicts, "the stats will be close to where they were last year." For now, though, we'll cheer the boys of spring. Will the sacred records fall? No one knows. But in June, everything is possible.