BOSTON — If the English won Waterloo on the playing fields of Eton, the Boston Red Sox won World Series Game 2, if not the series in its entirety, on the backfields of Fort Myers. As Boston rookie manager Alex Cora and his staff planned spring training last January, hitting coach Tim Hyers came to him with an idea: a dedicated station on a back field just for situational hitting.
“I loved it,” Cora said. “I’ve heard people say a strikeout is just another out. I never believed that was true.”
Hyers set up a pitching machine on the field and either cranked it to his maximum velocity—not quite 100 mph—or programmed it to spit out nasty breaking balls.