he says. “He missed. It was right down the middle. You
hang it, we bang it.”
Soto pulls the slider halfway up the pavilion in right
field. Washington wins, 7–3.
“These are the stories I like to keep to myself because
people might think I’m lying,” Soto says. “I don’t care.
It’s the little things I see.”SOTO DREW 145 WALKS last season at age 22. Only
one hitter that young had such a keen eye: Williams,
who walked 147 times at 22 in 1941, the year he hit .406.
Time is the currency of hitting. The sooner a hitter
reads the pitch the more time he has to operate the radar
defense system in his head: Identify the object, calculate
its speed and trajectory and, if all adds up, smash it to
smithereens. Soto’s vision buys him time. Sometimes
he can read a pitch before it leaves the pitcher’s hand.
“I try to see the hand of the pitcher,” he says, then
makes a circle with his thumb and index finger, the
traditional changeup grip. “I can see this a lot while
the ball is in his hand. Then you know, changeup. I
can’t see the curveball grip, but every time I see it pop
up out of the hand, I definitely can see that.
“I can’t tell if it’s a sinker or a cutter, but with the
spin on the way [to the plate], you definitely know
where the ball is going to land. With sliders, I can see
the dot on the ball. Definitely. But not all of them have
a dot. Most of them have just a big circle. You’ve got
to see the fastball and the slider. Then I go, O.K., the
fastball does this; the slider does that.”
The key to operating this decoding system is the
steadiness of his base. Think of his eyes as a high-def
camera and the legs as its stand. By remaining so still
and balanced, Soto captures the baseball in remarkable
clarity. Cameras that move blur the image.
“For your eyes to be good, this and this”—Soto taps his
head and chest—“have to be good. You have to control
your body. You have to have balance with your body to
see the ball well. Because if your body is going too much
forward, every ball [looks like] a fastball. Every one.”On the eve of Game 1 of the 2019 World Series, hitting
coach Kevin Long tells Soto, “Gerrit Cole is going to go
upstairs with his fastball. You’re going to hit a home
run off it.”
In the first inning Houston’s Cole strikes out Soto on
three high fastballs at 97, 98 and 99 mph.
“I just tried to get a little more on time on the fastball
and try to make contact,” Soto says. “He just went by me
with three fastballs, so I was ready for it the next time.”
They meet again in the fourth inning. Cole throws a
high fastball at 96 mph with his first pitch. Soto destroys
it 417 feet to left field for a game-tying home run.
“That was perfect-perfect, like in the game The Show,”
Soto says. “Perfect-perfect contact. That was loud. Yeah,
that was loud.”ASK SOTO WHAT he loves most about baseball, and
his answer is of an aesthetic, not an accomplishment.
“To see the fade of the ball going to left field,” he says,
smiling at the vision of it in his mind. “I really do love
it. Every time I hit the ball to the 399 sign, I love to see
the ball that way and the way it is spinning. I heard this
from a lot of good hitters: Hitting is like a dance or an
art. Every time you see the ball jumping off your bat
you just feel amazing. When you see the way the ball is
going and the way the ball tails, it’s crazy.
“It tells me my swing is right, and I’m inside the ball
and I’m keeping it as tight as I can. Like Kevin Long
used to tell me, ‘You keep it tight, you keep it right.’ ”Verlander looks for the sign from Chirinos for the fifth pitch
of the at bat, the first one after the Soto Shuff le. Soto knows
what is coming.
“He was fighting with the umpire,” Soto says. “He wanted
to throw that pitch the whole at bat. He kept missing.
“I knew he was going to throw me a fastball. It was
because of a lot of things. It comes with the at bat before. He
56 threw me a slider and I hit a double. So 3–1, his best pitch is
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