Charles Gipson isn’t even hitting his weight, and yet, with a 94-37 record, who cares?
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Larry Henry Sports Columnist |
I wish I had Charles Gipson’s confidence.
Write a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel?
No problem. Have it done in three weeks.
Gipson is supremely confident that he can hit.
Two-forty? Two-fifty?
No sweat. "I know I can do that," he says boldly.
So why doesn’t he?
Why doesn’t he stop saying he can and just do it.
Because he needs more at-bats, he claims. He can’t hit if he gets only 60 or 70 opportunities a season.
Which makes sense.
Batting is timing. Batting is confidence. Batting is getting to play.
Batters can’t work on timing or build confidence if they’re sitting the bench.
Charles Gipson sits a lot.
He mostly gets off the bench to pinch-run or as a late-game defensive replacement for the Mariners.
He’s exceptionally fast. He plays fine defense. He has a strong and accurate arm.
He can play any outfield position. Third base. Shortstop.
If only he could hit …
… he could earn $2 million a year rather than $235,000.
… he could get a lot more playing time, maybe even start.
If only … .
"There’s no way you can hit with 70 ABs in a year and have consistency," the affable 28-year-old Californian maintains. "You’ve got to have 200 or 300 ABs."
And the only way you get that many at-bats is to show that you can hit. But if you can’t hit, you sit.
Charles Gipson is caught in a Catch-22.
The Mariners can’t send him back to Tacoma because he’s out of options, meaning he’d have to clear waivers first, which he wouldn’t. So he stays on the big club, takes what playing opportunities he can get and tries to make the most of them.
If only he could hit.
His current average is an anemic .152. That’s seven hits in 46 at-bats. Last year he batted only 29 times, but hit .310. It helped that he had more than 200 at-bats with Tacoma.
"Actually, he’s improved his hitting," manager Lou Piniella insists. "The only problem is, he has room for improvement."
To get even better, Piniella suggests that Gipson play winter ball in Puerto Rico or Venezuela. "The problem is," Piniella laughs, "you’ve got to go there and hit or they send you home."
Joe DiMaggio didn’t have this problem. But then, the Yankee Clipper was a natural.
Charles Gipson wasn’t. And he came late to baseball. He didn’t take it up until his sophomore year of high school.
Part of his problem might have been that he was too versatile an athlete. Had he given all of his time to baseball, he might be way ahead of the game. But he had to sample several sports, to get a taste of each to see whether he liked it.
His best sport was wrestling, but he gave that up after his freshman year. "I didn’t like the training," he says. "They have the heat going and you carry people around on your back and they spit in your face, a military kind of training. I said ‘I’m going to chill out on that.’ "
He started playing basketball as a sophomore "but wasn’t any good until I got to be a junior, after I started growing a little bit."
By all reports, he was a standout in football, both in high school (quarterback) and junior college (receiver). "My dad thought I was going to be in the NFL," he says. "He never thought I’d be a baseball player. They (the JC coaches) didn’t even know who I was when I walked on the field, then I turned around and had a great season. I was the second receiver when the season started and the go-to guy when the season ended."
As Gipson begins talking about some of the football schools that were sending him letters (San Diego State, Tennessee), Mark McLemore, who lockers next to him, softly croons "come and carry the water."
Gipson smiles and goes on chatting.
It was his athleticism that attracted the Mariners, who selected him in the 63rd round of the 1991 draft. Gipson liked the idea of a non-contact sport.
"After junior college, I realized I didn’t want to play football anymore," he says. "I was 160-some pounds and I was getting beaten up every day. I knew that the higher you went in football, the harder you were going to get hit and the more injuries you were going to have."
So he hooked his hopes on a sport in which you don’t get hit but you’re expected to hit. So far, his most memorable moments have been on defense. He’s made some splendid catches and throws.
When he’s sent into a game to play defense, he wants the ball hit to him. "I don’t play a lot and I’m like, ‘Please hit the ball in the gap so I can run and catch it,’ " he says. "I’m not afraid of the ball. I know I can field. I know I can throw it."
He surmises that his arm strength comes from throwing a football in high school. "They called me every day to come early before school started and they’d strengthen my arm by doing drills with the football and then, when I went out to play baseball, I was like "whoa," the ball’s traveling, goodness gracious. Ever since then my arm’s been really good."
Gipson can’t explain the accuracy with which he throws. "I’m not afraid to take a chance," he says. "I think sometimes that’s the key. Just grab it and throw it as hard as you can."
Sometimes when he sees Ichiro Suzuki make a good throw from right field, Gipson has fantasies of himself out there. "They go, ‘He’s got the best arm in the league.’ I wonder what they’d say about me if they saw my arm every day."
Until he starts to hit, we can only guess.
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