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3 hours ago
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If you really stop and think about it, being a switch-hitter at the major league level should be just about impossible.
Hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports, and MLB pitching is more overpowering and filthy than it's ever been. So just to make it a bit more challenging, how about sometimes going to the plate from one side with one set of mechanics, and other times flipping it around.
Back in the day, a travel baseball coach of mine whose son was a switch-hitter said it took three times the swings to get the proper reps to be a good switch-hitter. If you just doubled up, the mechanics wouldn't stick enough, because they'd meld into one another. There needed to be even more swings to have any hope of maintaining your swing from both sides of the plate.
The great Mickey Mantle, back in Commerce, Oklahoma, used to replicate the great Yankees lefties for an hour, then the righties for an hour, swinging over and over and over.
And in this era, Mariners superstar Cal Raleigh took countless hours of batting practice from his father, too, with switch-hitting a skill passed down through time that surely requires a paternal touch to put in the hours needed to succeed.
And yeah, he's definitely succeeded.
Raleigh blasted two home runs on Tuesday night to set the new single-season record for home runs by a switch-hitter.
In that historic 1961 season, overshadowed by Roger Maris, Mantle blasted 54 homers. That record stood for 64 years.
But now Raleigh has 56, and counting, a week-and-a-half still to play.
Fittingly, on his milestone night, Raleigh hit one from each side of the plate.
The first, the one that surpassed Mantle, came from the left side. Raleigh hooked a towering fly ball down the right-field line, fair and way gone.
The second, for good measure, came right-handed on a changeup, one that Raleigh lined like a laser beyond the centerfield fence.
There have been other great switch-hitters, of course.
Chipper Jones may be the best bridge between Mantle and Raleigh. There's been Pete Rose, and Carlos Beltran, and Eddie Murray, and Lance Berkman.
Add Raleigh to any discussion of the greatest switch-hitters ever.
There's certainly never been a catcher who switch-hit anywhere near the level of the guy they call the Big Dumper.
Don't take this for granted at all.
It shouldn't be this easy to hit absolute bombs from both sides of the plate off of modern major league pitching. It really should never have been this easy, not for Mantle, not for anyone.
But for a select few hitters in the history of baseball, the task of hitting a round ball squarely from both sides of the plate has been something they've excelled at.
No one has done it more prodigiously than Raleigh this season.
MORE: Cal Raleigh has brought his historic pain to 10 teams equally this season
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