We are all products of where we come from and I am no different. My aggressive style on the bases, making the most of the opportunities presented to me, and above all my willingness to be a team player all have their roots in how I grew up. The approach to hitting and team-oriented strategy I advocate in this book (and even the way I tested my assertions) are all reflections of the life I have lived.  I try to make the most of every opportunity, maintain intense focus, be part of a larger team effort and surround myself with good people who will provide sound advice and help keep me on the right path. This formula has worked for me as someone who came from a place where very few would bet that I would someday make it to the major leagues and be part of a world championship team that would rewrite record books.

I did not play organized baseball until I was 12 years old.  In retrospect, that was probably a good thing.  I was always athletic, so I let my God-given ability carry me, and I did not get inundated with too much mechanical information.  I was introduced to baseball by my older brother, Marlon “Doe” Dozier, and he was, effectively, my first coach.  He would keep things simple by saying, “Head, just see it, then put the fat part of the barrel on the ball.”  By keeping things simple, I was able to be aggressive, have fun and figure out things for myself.  Today, youth baseball is totally different. Parents hire coaches to give their kids batting lessons at 6 years old and pitching lessons at 8 years old.  Kids are working on their mechanics before their bodies even begin developing.  And the information they are being given may not be correct:  “get your back elbow up,” “swing down on the baseball,” “swing level to the baseball” and “widen your stance.”  So, not only do kids lose the opportunity to play in a fun and stress-free environment (it is, after all, just a game), they also miss out on the best way to learn the game:  through trial and error.  Players want to be perfect out of the box, when in reality making mistakes (especially in practice) is an important way to learn things. 

Once I started playing organized baseball, I was good enough for my coaches to just let me play and they didn’t change a whole lot with my game.  Like Doe had told me, I kept it simple.  All I thought about was being aggressive, playing hard, putting the ball in play and using my speed.  But I learned that if I swung at a high fastball, I was probably going to swing and miss or strike out.  I know that approach is nothing special, but at least I had figured out that much on my own—and not because someone simply told me not to swing at high pitches.  In high school I started to hit for more power.  I don’t know how or why the power came, but it did, and my approach remained the same.  In one game during my high school senior season, I hit two home runs, each estimated to have traveled over 400 feet.  After that game I always wondered why I could not hit home runs more often because I clearly had enough power to do it.  At the time, I attributed it to luck—largely because that was what my coach told me, and then he advised that I go back to focusing on hitting ground balls due to my speed.   I now know that it wasn’t luck.  The reason that I know that it wasn’t luck is because through my research I’ve found that every hitter has to elevate the ball the same way.  A home run is just a by-product of getting the ball into the air.  And in order to get the ball into the air over and over again, a hitter needs to repeat the same proper swing path and mechanics, which I will discuss further in Part III of this book. 

After my senior year in high school, I was picked by the San Diego Padres in the seventh round of the amateur draft.  Once I got into pro ball, hitting coaches would tell me to swing down on the ball to get backspin.  They would say, “A little guy like you needs to focus on line drives and hitting the ball up the middle and the other way.”  As an 18-year-old kid, this sounded good, but I still needed to learn some basics: How to hold the bat properly, what my stance should look like and how I should swing the bat in order to get the results my coaches wanted.  Needless to say, I was confused and didn’t know what to do.  Unfortunately, it showed.  I struggled in the first couple games.  Then, I went back to what I knew best: Get low in my stance, lay off the high fastball and put the ball in play.  Largely using my own technique, I finished my rookie season with a .323 batting average.  The next year when I reported to spring training, the Padres asked me to try to cut down on my strikeouts, increase my walks and hit .300+ again.  They didn’t say how to do any of this; they just wanted it done.  So, in order for me to accomplish what the team wanted, I felt like I had to wait until the pitcher got two strikes on me before I could think about swinging.  I’m sure this sounds familiar to a lot of hitters today with so much emphasis having been put on on-base percentage (OBP).  As you can imagine I found myself behind in the count and chasing pitches late in my at bats.  As a result, my average suffered, my strikeouts went up and my walks did not increase. The experiment was a failure.  Once I got home to East St. Louis, I realized that the best chance I had to make the major leagues was to rely on the skills that got me drafted.  I went back to basics again: I got low in my stance, I got more aggressive and when I got a pitch I could handle, I put the fat part of the barrel on the ball. 

Once I went back to my way of doing things, my career began to take off.  Speaking of “my way,” that style clearly caught the attention of the New York Yankees, who traded for me and Hideki Irabu in 1997.

The biggest test of my career came in the spring of 1998.  Whatever I knew about hitting had to be displayed during the first thirty days of spring training because I was out of options and the Yankees had no roster spots available.  The most likely outcome would be to play well enough to be traded.  I had to consider that they had just traded for Chuck Knoblauch, a three-time All-Star second baseman.  If I didn’t I would be sent down to the minors and probably never be heard from again.  I remember driving back to my apartment thinking that I had come too far to fail so my only option was to play well.  I went to the field each and every day looking to “zone down” and lay off the high fastball.  I did just that and found myself on the opening day roster for the New York Yankees.  I can’t describe how easy hitting came to me with this simple approach.  That year, I even won an award for being the best rookie of the spring training.  Previously, I had no idea that the award even existed and was truly honored and surprised.  I would later learn that the Yankees had been awarding this since 1956 and the past recipients make a truly impressive list: Tony Kubeck, Johnny Blanchard, Tom Tresh, Roy White, Willie Randolph, Don Mattingly, Al Leiter, Hensley Muelens, Gerald Williams and Jorge Posada.  Since 1988, the award has been given to other worthy individuals including Alfonso Soriano, Nick Johnson, Hideki Matsui and Brett Gardner.

Being a member of the 1998 world championship team did so much for me and my career. I’m pretty sure most people think that I’m talking about the World Series ring itself and the additional monetary bonus that comes from winning the World Series.  Those things were awesome, but being around all the veteran and superstar players each and every day is what I remember most.  Being a role player, I had the chance to either talk hitting or watch hitters who are considered to be some of the best to ever play the game.  I took full advantage of this opportunity because I thought it unlikely that it would ever happen again.  I watched and studied Derek Jeter’s famous inside out swing, Chuck Knoblauch’s and Bernie Williams’ low batting stances, Paul O’Neill’s famous over exaggerated head down practice swing, Darryl Strawberry’s uppercut swing, Tim Raines’s Walt Hriniak style swing and Chili Davis’ sweet swing from both sides of the plate.  I also received some of the most invaluable instruction one could ever imagine from Yankee legends such as Reggie Jackson, Mickey Rivers, Willie Randolph and Chris Chambliss.  I ended up hitting .380 in 1998 playing in a limited role from opening day to the end of the season, and I credit that to being immersed in conversations about and witnessing some of the best hitting in baseball and then being able to take what I’d learned and execute it throughout the season.