The struggle against a pitcher was Hornsby’s refuge. He stood deep in the box, so far back that contemporaries took note of it. Hornsby said it allowed him to wait on the breaking pitch and hit it after the break. He held his bat high, higher than the other three great hitters of his time, Cobb, Shoeless Joe, and Babe Ruth. Like Henry Aaron years later, Roger liked to twist his hands on the handle of the bat as he waited for the pitch. He was a dangerous pull hitter, once telling his son Billy, who briefly tried to reach the majors, “No pitcher could throw an inside fastball past me…no one.”
