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Friday, May 23, 1997

Big 12 sluggers prove good things come in small packages

By AL CARTER / The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS - Oklahoma State's Rusty McNamara loves to hit home runs. He especially loves to hit home runs on TV.

"On TV," he says, "I look like I'm at least 5-11."

Size, you see, is something of a problem for the Cowboys senior - everywhere, that is, except at the plate. McNamara has hit 23 homers this season, second-most in the Big 12. But when recruits visit the OSU campus, McNamara wishes he could walk around in 6-inch spikes.

"They all expect me to be some kind of super huge guy," he says. "Instead, they're all bigger than me."

It's common knowledge to everyone else in college baseball - the biggest hitters these days often come in the smallest packages. Little guys, swinging from the heels at grooved pitches with pristine alloy bats, are having the times of their lives.

Jeff Guiel, McNamara's partner on OSU's infamous "Bomb Squad," stands 5-10. That hasn't kept Guiel from matching McNamara's 23 homers.

McNamara, who is probably two inches shorter than his 5-9 listing, has hit 42 homers over the past two seasons. He admits with a grin that he has no idea why.

In his four high school seasons, McNamara hit exactly four homers. As a junior college freshman, he muscled up and hit three.

Then he transferred to OSU and immersed himself in a program of high-intensity weight training and high-tech ball-mashing. Last year he launched 19 homers to lead the Big Eight.

The Cowboys have four players - Guiel, McNamara, Billy Gasparino and Josh Holliday - with a combined 77 homers this season. That's more homers than the team totals of nine Big 12 schools. And, yet, only one of the four homer-happy Cowboys stands 6-0. Gasparino, the second baseman, is that height exactly.

But OSU isn't the only school capitalizing on the mighty mite trend. Keith Ginter, Texas Tech's 5-9 second baseman, thought he was tapped out on homers when he hit his third in March. Now he's got 17.

Before Jon Topolski arrived at Baylor, the Bears' 5-10 center fielder had exactly one lifetime home run. He hit it when he was 10. Last year, as a Baylor freshman, he hit three.

This season Topolski hit 11 - the seventh-highest total in Baylor history. Topolski's power surge has amazed his teammates.

"They paint me bad," he says. "Bigger guys will rub up against me and say, 'C'mon, give me some pop.' "

Mark Johnson's Texas A&M lineup features eight regulars, none taller than 6-0. That's the height of Johnny Hunter, the team's homer leader with 15.

"But one of the jewels of our game is that the little guy can play," Johnson says. "The little guy can be dynamite."

The Aggies helped set the current trend with the hitting heroics of John Byington, who slugged 47 homers during a three-year A&M career from 1987-89. Byington was 5-9. The Aggies' latest Byington makeover is freshman Steven Truitt, a 5-9 outfielder who two years ago led all Houston area high schoolers in home runs.

Truitt hit six homers during the regular season, then ripped two more in the Big 12 Post-Season Tournament last weekend.

"People have told me I'll always be a singles hitter," Truitt says. "I know I can hit home runs."

"Everybody likes the big guys," Johnson says. "The pros are always out body-checking. But those small, scrappy guys are often your bread and butter."

To hear college coaches and players talk, the little guys have all the advantages. The smaller player comes with a small strike zone - which represents a bigger challenge for college baseball's diluted corps of pitchers. A smaller hitter can apply better leverage to a good pitch low in the strike zone. Pitchers still try to pitch around meat- of-the-order guys like McNamara and Guiel. But many smaller hitters occupy the leadoff spot - or elsewhere in the order where the pitcher's primary concern is to get ahead in the count. That translates to a steadier diet of fastballs.

Says Topolski: "You'll never see them throwing us a lot of change-ups."

Still, the little guys readily admit that the biggest reason for their power prowess has little to do with physical skills.

"C-405," Topolski says, referring to a popular aluminum bat model. "With these bats, it's not hard to hit home runs."

"Obviously, the bats allow it to happen," Johnson says. "That's a dangerous weapon no matter who's swinging it. But the emphasis on weights has a lot to do with it, too."

Ginter, who has six leadoff homers this year, may be the league's best example of big-guy strength squeezed into a little guy's body.

"You could take everything Ginter's got, put it on a 6-3 frame and it would fit," Tech coach Larry Hays says. "He's a hoss."

"You look at any 5-9 guy who's hitting home runs," Guiel says, "and you're looking at a guy who's pretty stocky and has a lot of muscle."

Going, going, gone. And McNamara is the first to admit that it soon will be. McNamara probably will be in pro ball before summer's end. There, he'll swap his aluminum bat for wood.

"I'll be lucky to get six homers a year," he says. "I won't be a home-run hitter anymore. I can kiss it good-bye."

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