Golson is silencing his doubters 

There have been times in Greg Golson’s previous four years of pro ball where he felt like the abondoned suitcase that keeps going round and round on the luggage carousel.

Especially in 2006, when the former first-round draft pick repeated a level at low Class A Lakewood.

People around the game, the media and maybe even a few in the Philadelphia organization began advancing the idea that the Phillies had made a mistake in selecting the physically gifted high school All-American out of Texas.

“People have been doubting me since I got drafted,” said Golson, who is immediately likeable and obviously well-bred. “I’ve always had doubters, especially when you’re a top pick. I started doubting myself, to tell you the truth, when I went back to Lakewood in ’06. That was why I stumbled a little bit.”

When the critics look at Golson’s career numbers they always gravitate toward the column that contains the strikeouts, and no doubt he has had more than his share of problems in that area. The numbers don’t lie: His strikeout to walk ratio measures better than 5-to-1.

The majority of those whiffs have come against offspeed pitches – breaking balls and changeups.

Golson is aware of his shortcomings in that area, but he also is certain he alone owns the finishing pieces to the puzzle.

“The knock is that I can’t hit the offspeed stuff,” he said, “but the offspeed pitches I’m swinging at, I don’t think Barry Bonds could hit, because they’re in the dirt or out of the strike zone. It’s (pitch) recognition, and the reason I wasn’t recognizing the pitches is because I was so geared to hitting the ball and was making decisions so early to try to hit it.”

In other words, his anxiety caused him to swing at the ball before it arrived in the zone, thus making him at times look awkward and even foolish as a young player.

“If I wait an extra split second then I see the pitch and can lay off it,” he continued. “There’s a misconception I can’t hit the breaking ball. Actually I can’t hit the ones I’m swinging at because I don’t think anybody could.”

In case you are keeping score, three of Golson’s five home runs this year have come off breaking balls. So has his one game-winning hit.

Last Sunday he opened up more than a few eyes when he went 5-for-6 with three leg hits, a solid two-run single up the middle when he was buried in the count, and a three-run homer.

It was hard to say which of his five hits was most impressive, but I’ll take the first, when he easily beat out a one-hopper to third. The Akron third baseman basically melted away after watching the speedy Golson beat out a strong and accurate throw.

It was his best day as a pro. He finished the afternoon hitting .331. He credits the night before, when a long rain delay sent everybody home in a crabby mood, for what followed.

“When we came out (to resume play) it was like an instructional league game,” he said. “There was nobody in the stands, it was quiet, the music wasn’t even playing. My last at-bat of the game I hit a ball real hard up the middle. I had no adrenaline going. I was just up there relaxed and trying to do the job.

“I tried to carry that attitude over to the next game, that no matter how many people were in the stands, just have the same attitude – just me and the pitcher, me and the pitcher. That was what I tried to do the whole game and it ended up working.”

Golson went into a precise verbal clinic on his two-strike problems, and this is what it boils down to: In an effort to avoid a second strike in a given count, he would swing randomly at most subsequent offerings. It was negative thinking, and of course it was failure driven.

“I’m not thinking up there as much this year,” he said. “Before when the ball came out of the pitcher’s hand I was just trying to put the ball in play because I didn’t want to strike out instead of focusing on hitting a strike. I think my attention was on the wrong thing. I had negative thoughts.

“With an 0-and-0 count, 1-and-0, 2-and-0, I felt like I was the best hitter on the planet. As soon as I got one strike on me I said, ‘OK, I don’t want to get to two strikes,’ so I’d swing at the next pitch. This was the whole thing I was going through last year and that one game I had this year when I struck out four times.

“It was kinda like, ‘What am I doing up here?’ Then I had to catch myself and realize I have quick hands and I can hit the ball if it’s a strike.”

Reading manager P.J. Forbes was the manager at Lakewood in 2005. He knows his gifted center fielder as well as anybody.

“In 2005 he couldn’t hit a ball to the right side of second base,” Forbes said about the right-handed hitting Golson. “Not on purpose. Now I see him hit line drives to right field and I watch him take batting practice and hit line drives over there. That’s just something he flat out couldn’t do before, so the strides are there.

“He obviously knows his strengths and weaknesses, and that is half the battle. The other half is overcoming them. He knows his bane is breaking balls and changeups and balls off the plate. It’s something he’s going to have to battle.”

Golson has the potential to become one of those gifted individuals put on this earth in the name of greatness. The key word is potential. Certainly the gifts are abundant.

“The tools are just fine,” Forbes said. “He has power, speed, the arm, and now he’s hitting for average. What a weapon his speed is. With two strikes I don’t care if I hit it with my thumb, my index finger, whatever, just put it in play; I can beat it out. How do you defense this guy if he can put the ball in play on a consistent basis? You can’t defense him.”

Golson distinguished himself against big league pitching this year in spring training. Charlie Manuel took the kid under his huge and experienced arm.

“He said I was trying to fit into a role,” Golson said about Manuel, whose hitting guru was none other than Ted Williams. “He said it didn’t look like I was going up there to hit, but that I was going up there to be a leadoff hitter instead.”

The Phillies had taken one look at the teen-age Golson and that breathtaking speed and obvious athletic ability and decided he was best suited to leading off, even though he had always hit in the three or four holes in high school. It changed his thinking; it led to the faulty approach that still nags him. Now the organization wants him hitting down in the lineup.

“I tried to fit into that leadoff role instead of being myself,” Golson explained. “Charlie told me, ‘You can put the ball on the ground and steal 40 bases from the 5-hole or the 6-hole. What does it matter where you’re at?' ”

Said Manuel about his protégé: “When I watch him, I see he’s learning how to hit and learning what kind of hitter he is. He needs to concentrate on hitting. That’s the first rule of thumb, going up there to hit. If you get a ball to hit, you hit it.

“If you put him in a place in the order where he’s comfortable and he can concentrate on hitting instead of taking a 3-1 fastball or some things that a leadoff hitter might do, he can do well.”

Golson, who has fit comfortably into the 3-hole in Forbes’ lineup, also spent a lot of time talking to reigning NL MVP Jimmy Rollins, another guy who was knocked early in his career for lacking the skills and the focus to lead off.

“The stuff they said about him they’re saying about me – I’m not a good leadoff hitter, I swing too hard, I’m not putting the ball in play enough,” Golson said. “He just told me to trust my hands, and if I’m committed to a good swing, it should all play out.”

Golson was hitting .324 as this was being written. He was leading the Phillies in hits (55), runs (31), home runs (5), stolen bases (14) and outfield assists (5). He also had struck out 50 times in 170 at-bats.

Forbes understands the difficulties all young players encounter in an effort to take charge of the mental game of cleanly and consistently hitting a pitched baseball.

“I don’t want to strike out, I don’t want to strike out, I don’t want to strike out,” he rattled off about their approach. “That’s normal. We’ve all been there as baseball players. You just get in those spells where everything you swing at is a ball and everything you take is a strike. Those periods happen.

“The mind is a terrible thing in baseball. It can be your biggest downfall. I’m constantly telling guys to get out of their own head: When you walk on the field be empty (mentally) until you need it, where am I going to throw the ball, how many outs are there, blah, blah, blah.”

Golson has had hot starts before in his career, only to run into mental walls of his own making. Like the Cheshire cat, he is capable of appearing and disappearing. And like Billy Batson, Shazam! He can become Captain Marvel.

He also can be provoked.

“It didn’t hurt me as much as it hurt knowing my parents and family and people who pushed for me were reading things,” Golson said about the media types and the army of internet bloggers who took great glee in making sport of him and the Phillies. Some of them became mean and personal. “It hurts them (my supporters) more than it hurts me because I know what’s within me. They think it’s hurting me, but the whole time it was like, ‘No, that’s not me, that’s not me.' I struggled, but everybody struggles.

“It hissed me off a lot to tell you the truth, and it made me want to do something about it. When you have a good game they don’t say anything. When you have a bad game it’s, here we go again. Now they’re not saying anything about me.”

Greg Golson has too much going for him not to succeed. Still, at 22, he is a work in progress, and he will continue to experience growing pains until he finally figures things out. He brings to mind a shopping cart, with that one contrary wheel that is at odds with the others.

Once he gets all the wheels going in the right direction, there’s no telling how far he may go and how smoothly he may get there.

This story was posted on May 23, 2008