Wednesday, May 24, 2006
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
MINNEAPOLIS -- Casey Blake doesn't get much face time on ESPN, even though his .362 average heading into Tuesday night leads the American League.
It could be that many observers can't get their arms around the idea of Blake leading the league in anything. He is a guy who batted .241 last year and whose career average coming into this season was .255.
Blake certainly is aware that he was not the odds-on favorite to win the AL batting championship.
At age 32, when most players realize they are closer to the end of their careers than they are to the beginning, Blake might wonder if his peak production years are ahead of him.
After all, he never played in more than 19 games in any major league season until 2003, when he signed as a free agent with the Indians.
At an age when many players have 10 major league seasons behind them, Blake won't have five years of big league service time until a couple of months into the 2007 schedule.
If he'd gotten the opportunity to play every day when he was 22 or 23, maybe he would have been leading the league in hitting long ago.
"I don't know if I was ready to be a regular then," Blake said Tuesday.
"I wasn't taken as a high draft pick, and nobody gave me that chance. But like I said, maybe I wasn't ready."
Despite his lofty status among the league leaders in on-base percentage (.439), hitting with runners in scoring position (.400), road average (.379) and night average (.404), as well as overall average, conventional wisdom says that Blake can't keep hitting at his current rate.
"A lot of getting hits and hitting is luck," he said.
"If your confidence is high, then you can have a good approach at the plate and expect to hit the ball hard."