View Triple-A All-Star Home Run Derby. Triple-A All-Star Home Run Derby
When the best power hitters in Triple-A baseball were finished, a number of balls had left the park and pounded onto the pavement beyond the high barricade in left field. Andy Marte of the Buffalo Bisons, a top prospect in the Cleveland system, won the competition by hitting 29 home runs, and as shot after shot disappeared into the night sky, Tribe fans had to be saying: "Get this guy to Cleveland."
"I'm just trying to play hard every day, and show everyone that I can play in the big leagues," Marte said after defeating Ryan Ludwick of the Mud Hens in the final round of the home run derby. "There was a lot of good competition here, and I was just trying to be selective and get a pitch I could drive out of the ballpark."
He found that pitch often. Marte, a 22-year-old third base-man who hit a career-high 24 home runs in the 2004 season, hit 10 home runs in the first round last night, then blasted 13 in the semifinals before hitting six in the championship round to defeat Ludwick.
"Marte was consistent, and he's a heck of a talent," Ludwick said. "He just seemed to get stronger as the night went on, and that was an awesome display."
Ludwick, a 27-year-old outfielder who has 118 home runs in his career, started the final round with three home runs with only two outs, but faded and made eight straight outs. The format called for any strike, foul or ball in play to be called an out unless it cleared the fence for a homer. After 10 outs were made using the wooden bats used during the season, the professional hitters got three more swings with an aluminum bat.
Ludwick hit two additional home runs with the aluminum bat to give him five in the final.
"I had a blast, and just to get to the final round before the hometown crowd here was a big deal," Ludwick said. "But I got a little tired there at the end and my legs started coming out from under me. You gotta hit a lot of home runs to advance in this thing, so there's not much strategy or saving anything for later involved. I just tried to put consistent swings together."
The competition started with 10 participants - six current minor leaguers, three each from the International League and the Pacific Coast League; two former major leaguers, and two area high school players who qualified for the event during a series of preliminary contests held at Fifth Third.
Last night, the two high school players had to go first, and Northwood's Dominick Coduti sent a drive over the right-field fence after failing to get one out of the park on his first seven swings.
Coduti finished with two home runs, while Chris Chaney of Ann Arbor Huron did not connect for any home runs during his at-bats.
The former major leaguers in the contest were current Hens hitting coach Leon Durham and Howard Johnson, hitting coach with the Norfolk Tides. Only the current pros made it past the first round, with Nelson Cruz of Nashville and Luke Scott of Round Rock joining Ludwick and Marte in the semifinals.
Durham, who hit 147 home runs in his 10-year major league career, hit a pair of home runs in his at-bat in the first round last night, while Johnson drove one ball over the right-field fence at the 344-foot mark, but that was it.
"It was a lot of fun, and I got one out, and that's what I wanted to do," said Johnson, a former Detroit Tiger and a two-time National League All-Star with the Mets.
In his 14 years in the major leagues, Johnson hit 228 home runs, and had three seasons with 36 or more, but he said the stroke goes away quickly.
"It had been a couple of years since I had been up there with the bat and really tried to hit the ball out, and it's surprising how fast you lose that feel for it, the timing, and the ability to drive the ball a long way," the 45-year-old Johnson said.
"Those 30-homer seasons - that seems like an awfully long time ago - and it really wasn't that long ago, but my body says otherwise. This is a young man's game."
Contact Matt Markey at:
mmarkey@theblade.com
or 419-724-6510.
First Published July 11, 2006, 1:38 p.m.
