This article initially appeared in the September 22 issue of Sportsnet Magazine.
Not that long ago, Justin Morneau making the turn for September in contention for a batting title wouldn’t have been a story. He was one of the best hitters in all of baseball—what else was new?
On July 7, 2010, Morneau led off the top of the eighth inning for the Minnesota Twins at Rogers Centre by ripping an 0-2 pitch to centre field, and then stood on first base leading baseball in just about everything. Even by his standards, the numbers were nuts: He was riding a .345 batting average and had racked up 18 home runs and 56 RBI in exactly half a season. Anything close to that pace in the second half would have made another AL MVP award a gimme, and the reformed hockey goalie from New Westminster, B.C., would have been the ¬ first Canadian to win the award twice.
But in the time it took to barrel down to second base and slide hard to break up a double play, his magical half-season was frozen in time.
The future became dark and uncertain as Toronto Blue Jays in¬ elder John McDonald’s knee crashed into Morneau’s right temple. He suffered a concussion, and for a very long time afterward it seemed like nothing was ever going to be the same.
His recovery—complicated by neck and shoulder issues—stretched from weeks to months to years. For his next three seasons he hit just .256.
His power numbers disappeared, too. “You feel miserable, lost, frustrated,” Morneau says. “The unknown makes it so difficult. With [other injuries] you have timetables. With a concussion, every day is a test of: How do I feel today? Am I going to feel the same tomorrow? If I do this today, how will I feel tomorrow? It’s a constant wearing on your mind. Eventually it becomes so frustrating you just give in and let it run its course, and if you’re lucky, it does.”
This year, at age 33 and playing first base for the Colorado Rockies, Morneau is finally healthy. He’s having one of the most consistent seasons of his career—consistency being perhaps the highest achievement for a hitter in the grind of a 162-game season. Even better, if anyone suggests his recovery is a product of the thin air at Coors Field, his road splits and home splits are nearly identical.
But best of all, he’s enjoying it.
When he was standing on first base at the Rogers Centre as perhaps the most feared hitter in the game, he says he didn’t revel in it like you might expect. “Better” was never good enough; “best” was the ever-elusive goal. “When you’re doing well and you’ve been doing well for a few years you kind of expect more of yourself and try and push yourself further and further and be better and better,” he says. “You’re not able to step back and say, ‘Hey, I’m doing it all right now, I don’t need to keep beating myself up just because I took an 0-3. But having been one of the best and one of the worst, I can enjoy this a lot more now.” Morneau believes in the power of positivity. Hitting a baseball is so difficult, why dwell on the failures? So he keeps video of all his home runs and extra-base hits on his iPad, catalogued by year. He doesn’t look at the guy who was trying to ¬ find his way at the plate the past few seasons. He doesn’t need to. That wasn’t him.
This year? The swings are starting to look pretty familiar. “I’ll go back to some series I had this season where I felt really locked in and really good,” he says. “I’ll look at my at-bats and go, ‘Yup, that’s what it’s supposed to look like.’”
His long-overdue, first-ever batting title—a distinction that eluded him even in his 2006 MVP season—would be a nice follow-up to all this, but he doesn’t need the validation. Being able to look at his iPad for the first time in a long time and see himself as he always was is reward enough.