Every afternoon, the man with the best grasp of the strike zone since Barry Bonds walks into the cage and sets up a tee basically on his bellybutton. The baseball sits stationary about a fist's width from and center with his hips. To hit it with authority appears a near impossibility of physics, the angle forcing him to contort some 40 degrees to get the essentials -- eyes, hands and barrel -- onto the proper plane and the ball. It's a drill that seems designed to spawn a slew of catcher's interferences.
This is how Joey Votto begins each workday, swing after laborious swing, a master carpenter slaving over wood still unfinished.