Before Corey Dickerson became a budding All-Star with the Tampa Bay Rays, he was recognizable for the company he kept. Upon arrival at the ballpark, he rarely went anywhere without a bat in his hand.
When Dickerson wasn't spraying line drives in the cage during his time with the Colorado Rockies, he was roaming the clubhouse with a Tucci model TL-271 in his grip. Or sitting at his locker, holding the barrel with two fingers and lightly pinging at the top to locate the sweet spot. Or cleaning it with alcohol or tape remover to detect precisely where he made contact the previous game. Or weighing it. Or taping the handle, depending on how sore his hands were on a given day.
Amid the daily maintenance, Dickerson was perpetually on the lookout for good wood. Since his days in youth ball, he had developed a Tony Gwynn-like obsession with bats and an appreciation for the damage he could inflict with the right model in his hands. Bats didn't arrive in big boxes en masse from the manufacturer when he played in the minor leagues, so they were a precious commodity to be alternately hoarded or mooched.
"He's definitely a bat freak,'' says Nolan Arenado, Dickerson's teammate from Double-A ball to the majors. "If I hit a couple of homers, he would come to my locker and say, 'Can I get one of these?' So I'd give him one and he'd hit a couple of homers and I'd be like, 'Hey, can I see one of your bats?' And he'd say, 'I don't have enough.' I'd be like, 'What the heck? Come on, Dickey.' He loves bats and he loves hitting.''
Based on the numbers, Dickerson is quite proficient at selecting the right weapon and knowing how to use it. At age 28, he's that rare hitter who has taken his game to a different level after leaving Coors Field. After the Rays ranked 14th in the American League in runs in 2016, they are a surprising third behind the Houston Astros and New York Yankees this season. Dickerson, who arrived from Colorado in a four-player trade 16 months ago, is a big reason why. He leads the AL with a .342 batting average and 75 hits, ranks third behind Mike Trout and Aaron Judge with a .603 slugging percentage, and just set a Rays club record with 44 hits in May.
Dickerson's road to success has come with some adjustments. He's had to experiment to find productive ways to fill the downtime between plate appearances as a designated hitter, and he's grappled with the challenges of batting leadoff while staying true to his naturally aggressive approach.
In a world of hitters who eyeball pitches on the black and revel in deep counts, Dickerson is succeeding as the anti-Joey Votto. Dickerson has swung at a major league-high 46.9 percent of pitches outside the strike zone this season. That's more than 2 percentage points higher than the notoriously free-swinging Salvador Perez, who has drawn 105 walks in 2,891 career plate appearance with the Kansas City Royals.
Dickerson is thriving thanks to quick hands and a Vladimir Guerrero-like ability to crush balls that most hitters can barely reach. He recently doubled on a pitch from Texas starter Nick Martinez that bounced before it reached home plate.
"He's definitely a throwback, bad-ball hitter,'' says Rays hitting coach Chad Mottola. "There's nothing he can't cover, even out of the strike zone.''
Dickerson, a Mississippi native, played junior college ball at Meridian Community College before passing on a scholarship from Mississippi State to sign as an eighth-round pick with Colorado in 2010. His potential was readily apparent when he logged a .321/.379/.596 slash line in the minors and hit .299 with 39 home runs over three seasons in Colorado, but the Rockies eventually determined he was more valuable as a trade chip to fortify their pitching.
When general manager Jeff Bridich sent Dickerson and minor league infielder Kevin Padlo to Tampa Bay for reliever Jacob McGee and starter German Marquez, it was almost an afterthought for fans and media members who thought Carlos Gonzalez might be on the block.
Now both sides are benefiting. McGee is averaging 12.6 strikeouts per nine innings and Marquez has stepped in nicely to help the Rockies overcome some big pitching injuries. Dickerson, meanwhile, has rebounded nicely from a disappointing first season to become a focal point of the Tampa Bay lineup. Dickerson appeared in only 65 games with the Rockies in 2015 because of plantar fasciitis and a broken rib, and his abridged offseason workout regimen spilled over to 2016. He struggled with the transition to a new league, new pitchers and an unfamiliar clubhouse dynamic before posting an .855 OPS in September to salvage his season. He struck up an instant bond with Mottola, who replaced Derek Shelton as the Rays' hitting coach in early September.
"Your teammates don't know who you are, so you feel like you've got to prove yourself and show why they traded for you,'' Dickerson says. "When I was struggling, I felt like, 'Do these guys want me up here hitting (in this situation)?' In Colorado, if I went through a little struggle, those guys knew what I was capable of, and they had seen me every day for the last couple of years. I know they trusted me and believed in me. I think that was the biggest hurdle for me.
"In the second half, I kind of let it all go. Chad came in and said, 'Hey, I don't want you to change your stance or be afraid to try different stuff. I want you to be you.' That freed my mind up and I took off.''
"If I get 12 bats, I'm going to choose the best one to go up to the plate every single time. It's about quality and the way it feels. This is how I make a living for my family. So why wouldn't I pick the best piece of wood when I go up to plate?" Corey Dickerson on the art of choosing a bat
Dickerson spent the winter making changes to his body to maintain the momentum from his late-season surge. He cut back on pizza, sweets and other guilty pleasures. He read books on fitness and exercise physiology and adopted a new training regimen en route to losing 25 pounds. He did Pilates in Tampa, and worked on his core and lower back with personal trainer Matt Espy. Dickerson even took a spinning class in his hometown of Meridian at the Jeff Anderson Health & Fitness Center, where he churned away to the accompaniment of AC/DC and other classic rock tunes.
"It was mostly girls in the class,'' Dickerson says. Few of them knew or cared that a 2017 batting title contender was sweating buckets in their midst.
The left-handed hitter has continued to make subtle changes to his approach, reducing his leg kick and shortening his swing to become less vulnerable against lefties and a bigger threat to do damage with two strikes. He's hit 31 percent of his balls to left field, 37 percent to center and 32 percent to right, a breakdown that makes him difficult to defend. His .388 batting average against fastballs and .409 mark against breaking balls are testament to his ability to keep his hands back and still catch up to the heat.
His old Rockies teammates see the box scores each day without a trace of surprise over his gaudy stats. "Not at all,'' says shortstop Trevor Story. "He's been one of the more special hitters I've watched. He's one of those guys who seems like he was born to hit.''
Dickerson got plenty of mileage out of that Tucci 271 -- a bat model he used for the entire 2014 season at the suggestion of former Colorado teammate Troy Tulowitzki. Dickerson has since alternated between different Tucci and Marucci models and recently began favoring a Marucci DD10 in the 34-inch, 32-ounce range. Whenever a new shipment arrives, it's like Christmas morning all over again.
"I've always loved hitting, since I was really little,'' Dickerson says. "If I get 12 bats, I'm going to choose the best one to go up to the plate every single time. It's about quality and the way it feels. This is how I make a living for my family. So why wouldn't I pick the best piece of wood when I go up to plate?''
Time and almost 3,500 professional plate appearances have drummed home the most enduring lesson in the relationship: It's less about the quality of the bat than the aptitude of the man who's wielding it.