Bleeding.

I suppose you can tell something about a ballplayer by looking at the statistics he compiles over the course of a season or a career. The numbers can tell you whether or not  he makes good contact. Whether or not he has power. Whether or not he knows the strike zone.

The numbers can tell you if he has speed on the base-paths. If he has hands of stone, as I did. If he has range in the field and can grab one in the gap that 92 out of 100 guys would have missed. 

As computers have taken over more and more of human judgment, there are more an more numbers used in an effort to evaluate how someone performs between the chalk lines. There are numbers and data to the point of absolute nonsense. Numbers and data are so prevalent that sometimes they seem to overwhelm what you see with your own cataracted eyes.

Back when I played ball, my one long summer sojourn into the tumbleweed wilds of the Mexican Baseball League (AA), Daniel Garibay, our left fielder was very obviously our team's, Los Seraperos de Saltillo's, best hitter.

He had the most RBIs, and was second in both average and home runs. He was also an automatic pencil in. Hector Quetzacoatl Padilla, whom I had el Norte-tongue anglicized into Hector Quesadilla, could scribble Garibay into the lineup every day. He knew left field was well-manned, as was the third slot in our Swiss cheese batting order.

One afternoon, under the darkening skies just before a late summer thunder and downpour, I leaned on the batting cage, Hector at my side, watching Garibay take his whacks.

His stroke was furious and fast, he rotated at the hips each time he took a cut. And his swing was as level as a championship pool table.

"He has a beautiful swing," I said to Hector.

Hector agreed. "It is nearly perfect. If I could get him to be a bit more patient and a bit more selfish, he would be even better."

We watched him take some more cuts, splaying the horsehide to all fields in sharp needles that would sting a fielder's gloved paw.

"With more selfish," Hector continued, "Daniel could hit more home runs. He could drop his elbow and get more loft on the ball."

"Those line-drives would be fly balls."

"Yes," Hector agreed. "But he would strike out more. And Daniel hates the strike out. He prefers contact. He is too selfish, too prideful to strike out."

Garibay rested for a moment, spit on his hands, rubbed them in the batting-cage dust and continued chopping down forests.

"I knew he could hit before he could hit," Hector said. "I knew Daniel when he was a barefoot boy from a nothing mountain town. He was only 17 and weighed less than his duffle bag."

"I'm only 17."

"Yes, but you have long muscles like a man. Garibay had nothing."

"Drinking straw arms."

Hector laughed through his nose.

"His first batting practice I saw it. His ribcage from his arms was bleeding. His arms had rubbed his ribcage to blood from his too many swings."

"He batted so much he bled. Like Teodoro Williams, the Splendid Splinter."

"He batted so much he bled."

"I didn't need numbers. I didn't need the words of half-soused scouts. I knew then he would hit.

"He bled hitting. That is how you know."