The Foul Ball Was Not a Mistake

Some hitters beat you with power. Richie Ashburn beat you with patience.

He was a singles hitter in an era that worshipped the long ball, and he turned that into an art form. A .308 lifetime average, more than 2,500 hits, and a bat so precise he could foul off pitch after pitch until he got the exact one he wanted. Fourteen straight off Corky Valentine one afternoon. Another day he wore Sal Maglie down for 18 or 19 in a single at-bat, until the famously grim Barber finally just started laughing on the mound.

That was the whole point of Ashburn. The foul ball was not a mistake. It was a tool. Every one of them was a pitcher throwing something he did not want to throw, an at-bat stretching past the point of comfort, a defense left standing around waiting on a guy who would not go away.

Contact hitting like that has mostly disappeared from the game. The players who could spoil a pitcher's best stuff all day, foul off the nasty ones, and wait out a walk or a base hit were their own kind of craftsman. Ashburn was the best of them, and he did it for fifteen years.