Larry Walker believes in sushi. He believes in thrasher music and motorcycles and setting his alarm to include his favorite number. He believes in mail delivery and SWAT teams and the omnipotence of the numeral 3. Larry Walker believes that baseball is simple and that batting practice is overrated and that you can train your mind to follow three practice swings with a vaporous line drive the same way you can train a dog to sit before it gets a treat. Larry Walker is different. He has habits that started as quirks and morphed into carefully crafted superstitions. He believes in game preparation but often does not know the opposing starting pitcher until a half-hour before game time. When questioned about his unusual list of routines, he will tell you he believes baseball, the intricacies of which he learned relatively late in life, has some weird rules and customs of its own. How Larry Walker became the most complete player in baseball is one part of the story. How he stays there is a story unto itself.
There are those who believe baseball is a religion and every ballpark a shrine. Walker is not one of them. His career can be viewed as a systematic deconstruction of the idea of baseball as a spiritual, mystical journey. "Guy hits the ball, you field it and throw it back," he says. "Guy throws the ball, you hit it and run. I love the game, but I've never tried to make it harder than it is." He says the game has the capacity to bore him, and many of his routines have evolved from an initial desire to stave off that boredom. It's unlikely Kevin Costner would play him in the movie.
Take this scene, 30 minutes before game time, in the weight room of the Rockies' Coors Field clubhouse. Skid Row is thumping out of the speakers, to be followed by Zeppelin or maybe Metallica. Walker, sitting alone in the room, is completing the customary 30 minutes it takes to get his head right. He has finished his pregame sushi. He has taken maybe 100 cuts off the pitching machine under the stadium. He has delivered the clubhouse mail to his teammates. He has run sprints and stretched to the point where one drop of sweat chases the next. He has done everything according to a strict personal regimen that hovers between ritual and compulsion.
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