One day early this month at the Twins' spring training complex in Fort Myers, Fla., Twins hitting legends Rod Carew, Paul Molitor and Tony Oliva happened to walk through the team's clubhouse at the same time.

From across the room, former manager Tom Kelly's voice called out: "Man, there's a lot of hits right there!''

In fact, those three combined for 8,289 in their careers — not counting their 70 postseason hits. They also had 10 batting titles and 32 all-star appearances among them.

Molitor and Carew, both members of the Baseball Hall of Fame, rank ninth and 21st, respectively, in career major league hits, and Oliva undoubtedly would have joined them in both the hall and the 3,000-hit club if chronic knee injuries hadn't derailed the second half of his career.

All three went on to become hitting coaches, and they have spent this spring working as special instructors in Twins camp.

They might be the three greatest living hitters to have played for the Twins, and on a recent spring training day, they spent close to an hour with Pioneer Press staff writer Gordon Wittenmyer talking about what they know — and did — best: hitting.

PP: How much truth is there to what Yogi Berra and Crash Davis said: "Don't think'' when you hit?

Molitor: Maybe not completely literal. You want guys to get the thinking process about fundamentals and everything else out of the way during practice and when you get in the game you trust that you've prepared, so that you can just react to seeing the ball and keeping it simple — freedom of thought, freedom of swing.

Carew: That's true. You can't be at home plate worrying about where your hands are, where your feet are. You do that stuff in the cage.

Molitor: One thing about today's hitters, they're so consumed by mechanics. In between pitches at the plate you see them working on trying to get their hand down or keeping their front leg in. When I see a guy starting to make all these gestures during an at-bat up at the plate, I think he's done. He's overwhelmed a little bit.

Oliva: I like to make hitting very simple. I practiced how to hit the ball to the opposite field. I practiced how to pull the ball. I taught myself. I developed my own style of hitting so that I have the confidence if I want to hit the ball the opposite field, I used to be able to do it. If I want to pull the ball, I'd be able to do it, because that was the way that I practiced. Most of the time good hitting is reacting. … I don't like all that mechanical things — "My hands have to be here, my arms here, my head here, my head over a little bit." You don't have time for that. The ball comes too fast. And you have to have a plan.

Carew: When you're on the field, it's all about reaction, when your instincts take over, and you react to things. You look at (Twins third baseman Tony) Batista. If he can stand up there and hit like that, as long as he gets the bat back through the hitting zone …

Molitor: It's a result-oriented business. Mechanically, no one's going to recreate the mechanics of hitting. Guys are going to have their own approaches. They might look a little different, but, generally, as we have all taught hitting — or tried to — some things are never going to change. Whether it's balance, or trying to get guys to keep their hands inside the ball. But like these guys are saying, so much of the focus is on trying to do those kinds of things and they forget about the mental side of hitting. As I watched since I retired, I learned some of these guys don't understand what pitchers are trying to do to them, what their strengths are, what the pitcher's strengths are, what the situation dictates, understanding percentages related to counts — when you can cheat on certain pitches, when you can't — having the discipline to know that if I'm in a 100 percent fastball situation in my brain, I have to have the discipline not to swing at that slider on the black and roll over to shortstop. You understand the mental part of hitting.

Carew: Yeah, if your focus is sitting on a fastball in a fastball count, that doesn't mean you're going to swing at any fastball. You stay in that zone that you can get that fastball you can crush. You look at guys and they're in great counts and they're swinging at balls up over their heads, and you can tell, they know they're going to get a fastball and they're going to start that swing.

Molitor: But they don't have the discipline to get that pitch where they want it.

Oliva: It's a lot of little things that sometimes we work and we try to give the message that sometimes when you have a count like two balls, no strikes, you're looking for a pitch, and if that pitch is right there you want to crush it. You don't want to deal with the pitch that is a (pitcher's pitch). And many times we take that pitch. … I'm looking for a fastball.

Carew: That's a pitch that all hitters hit consistently. You get guys that want to hit the curveballs or want to hit the changeups. You can sit on a breaking ball and say, "OK, that's what I'm going to swing at." But if he throws a fastball I can't catch up. Or you see guys who might be sitting on that breaking ball, and then they get a fastball, they try to swing and it's a bad swing. It's like, "Make an out." I don't want to give away an at-bat when I'm up there.

What I used to do was I stood right on top of the plate. I was real close, where my hands were actually over the plate, because I want him to throw me fastballs. I felt even if they come inside I can take that pitch and take it to the opposite field. And you know that's what they're going to try to do. I was telling these kids, you know, everybody wants to hit so far off the plate. They want to dive. They want to dive into the ball.

PP: You hear hitters sometimes talk about setting up a pitcher. How much of that really goes on?

Molitor: You hear about hitters setting up pitchers. I wasn't smart enough to do that. I just tried to take advantage of the knowledge I did have in terms of remembering how guys have gotten me out and how they like to pitch me with two strikes, or different things like that, and you use the knowledge you have in that regard to make adjustments. But some guys say they took a bad swing at a changeup to set up hitting the next pitch …

Oliva: Don't believe it.

Carew: I cannot see that. I don't see that at all.

Molitor: Certain pitchers, they have a tendency to do the same things in terms of how they pitch, and that's what you try to pick up on. The ones that are difficult are the ones that don't establish patterns. Mike Mussina is a guy who never really could blow you away, but I'd go 0 for 4 off of him and he'd throw me cutters and sliders, and then the next game I'd see him I wouldn't see cutters and sliders. I'd see different pitches. He was just a hard guy for me to think with.

Carew: Then you have the kid (Brian) Moehler, (formerly) with Detroit. The first three innings of the game, you might see a lot of breaking stuff, and then the middle of the game, now he's going to go with more fastballs, and then as the game goes on, if he's still in there, then he starts mixing it up. So you can basically tell what to look for the first three innings. …

Oliva: For me, I used to move at the plate. Not way in the front or way in the back. Most of the time I liked to hit in the back of the plate, but if I face a guy like Jim Palmer, who used to throw very hard, over the top, and give me a little bit headache.

Carew: (Laughing) He gave a lot of guys a little bit of headache.

Oliva: But I was very successful against him, hitting the ball to opposite field, because I knew what he was doing to me. I knew he was going to come with the smoke, the good fastball. And I was able to hit it to opposite field good. I think he only threw me couple breaking balls in all the times I faced him. But when I faced Mike Cuellar and (Dave) McNally, I went to the top of the plate. I pulled those guys a lot better. It all depends on who's pitching for me. I make little adjustments.

Carew: And that's a big part of hitting, too, making adjustments. And not major adjustments, just minor adjustments. These kids sometimes they want to make major adjustments during the game, things they didn't work on in BP or something.

PP: So how much have some of the fundamentals in hitting changed — like players not being able to bunt as well as in the past?

Carew: I don't think that at the big-league level that guys are taking the bunting part of the game seriously. I think most guys, they want to hit. The game changed so much and everybody wants to swing the bat. So they get in that situation and the manager says, I want the guy from second base to third base, with nobody out — you've got to move them. And you don't necessarily have to get a base hit. A weak ground ball can also do that job, because there are about five, six or seven ways you can score from third base with no outs, one out.

Molitor: When guys go to the driving range, most guys want to work on their driver. But most of your shots are within 100 yards of the green.

Carew: That's true.

Molitor: In baseball as we've been in this offensive cycle, power cycle for whatever reasons, you don't see the practice time put into the smaller parts of the game. And it's kind of the monster that we've created with the smaller parks, expansion and everything else. Power is a lot of guys' tickets to the bigger contracts. Around here with Tom (Kelly) and Gardy (Ron Gardenhire), we always tried to keep the stress on the smaller things, and, hopefully, we can execute those things because we haven't hit the ball over the fence as much as some other teams.

PP: Didn't guys used to catch heat from teammates if they came back to the bench after failing at something as fundamental as moving a runner?

Carew: You do that today and guys get upset. They're so fragile. But you've got to have that. We had a club (when Carew was with the Angels) with (Don) Baylor, Reggie (Jackson), myself, Freddy Lynn, (Rick) Burleson, (Doug) DeCinces. And Baylor was the enforcer. You do your job. You get it done or he's going to come up to you and tell you. And you don't take it as negative criticism. It's constructive because he wants you to think about it next time you're in that situation. In my first year at California, I think I was 0 for 10 with runners at third with one out or no out. And he sat me down and said, "What the heck are you doing?" I was thinking about getting the fly ball instead of just getting the ball that I can hit hard some place and get the guy in. I failed. So when I was a coach with the Angels, I used to tell the guys, just go over and sit next to the guy and nudge him and tell him, "Hey, let's go, let's get the job done." They're like, "Oh, he's going to get upset with me." Or "He's not going to like me."

PP: Who are the best hitters in the game right now?

Carew: I have to go with Alex Rodriguez. … And I like (Hideki) Matsui with the Yankees.

Oliva: Alex, oh, man, he's awesome. But the last couple years, I haven't seen anybody with better timing that Barry Bonds. But if you want to pick a guy today to put on your club, a young one, who can do everything, I think I pick Alex.

Molitor: Bonds is amazing to me because he'll go 13-14 pitches in three or four at-bats and not get a pitch to hit. And then he gets one pitch to hit, and he's still ready. It's hard to have that kind of mind-set. He might not get a pitch to hit for a day or two or three at a time, and when he gets one he's able to do damage. That's impressive. You talk about Alex. You look for guys that have that combination of power and average and are still able to do situational things. That's why Rodriguez comes up, and Matsui — he's made a believer out of me the past couple years. The first year I thought he had some holes, but the tougher the pitcher the better he does. Those guys it's really neat to have in your lineup.

A lesser-known hitter that I've really come to appreciate is that Michael Young down in Texas. He doesn't get as much press as a lot of people, but I've watched him the last couple of years a little bit more closely. … He might not have the raw talent that Bonds and A-Rod and those guys have, but that shows you that you don't have to be the man to be someone who's really valuable to your ballclub. He gets the job done — good two-strike approach, can do some damage, knows how to take advantage of counts. I don't know if he's one of the best hitters in the game, but he certainly is a guy I think understands hitting.

PP: Who were some of the pitchers you hated to face?

Carew: When you're going bad, all of them. Me, I hated Rudy May. And I hated Mike Boddicker. Rudy May because I couldn't pick the ball up off of him too good, and he had a nasty running fastball and a Sandy Koufax breaking ball. And Mike Boddicker, who threw, slow breaking balls, slow breaking balls, slow breaking balls, used to just frustrate me. I wanted a guy that came right at me.

Oliva: I hate to face two guys. Rudy May was nasty. Nasty. But Sam McDowell — oh, man, he was too wild. He threw the ball all over the ballpark at 100 mph. Same thing with Nolan Ryan. You go up there and want to hit the ball someplace hard and you get no hits because those guys throw one ball middle of plate and the other behind your neck. You don't have any idea. … You know those guys pitching tomorrow, you know the people tonight they don't sleep.

Carew: The guy I liked to face was Catfish Hunter, because he came at you. I think, to me, the difference today is you don't see guys get two strikes and then go right at you. Today guys get two strikes and the next thing you know it's 3-2. That's why everybody worries about pitch counts, because these guys aren't going after hitters. You can almost sit back and know that when you get behind in the count what you can more or less expect. They take you from a defensive position and slowly but surely they put you back into an offensive position. Before, they're coming at you.

Molitor: I mentioned Mussina was tough for me. But I'm thinking about guys that I learned to be better at, guys like Randy Johnson and Pedro (Martinez). When I was a little younger, I used to think that with a lot of pitchers you can just look for the ball and feel like you can hit all their pitches. I found out that guys like Johnson and Pedro — Pedro had three great pitches and Randy had two great pitches — that if I tried to cover everything they had early in the count, I didn't have much success. What I started understanding was that I couldn't hit Pedro's fastball and his breaking ball and his changeup — I just couldn't look for any one of those three at any given time and have much success. So I started at least early in the count maybe picking something out that would give me a chance and try to have the discipline to have a chance. Randy Johnson, it's hard to hit his fastball and his slider. So you try to pick one out early until you get to two strikes and do the best you can. Once I started to understand that, I started doing a little better against guys like that.

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PP: How about your approaches to different types of pitches?

Carew: I wanted to hit the fastball. Pitchers are going to throw the fastball in the zone more consistently. The breaking ball is designed not to stay in the hitting zone but to be there and then gone. So I want to try and hit the pitches that are going to stay in the hitting zone longer, rather than the pitch that's not going to be there. So I prefer hitting off the fastball and making my adjustments to the other pitches.

I see some guys saying they're going to look for the slider to hit. If a guy's got a good slider and I'm going to look for the good slider to hit, it's tough. Unless you sit on it and say, OK, maybe this pitch I'm going to sit on it. But go through the at-bat — I see guys want to go through the whole at-bat, "I'm going to hit his slider." That's like saying, "I'm going to sit on (Bert) Blyleven's curveball." Oh, shoot. I don't want to hit Blyleven's curveball. I want to try and hit his fastball.

Oliva: I was lucky when I played because I was able to hit a breaking ball better than a fastball. I liked a low fastball no matter how low. But I was able to react. If a pitcher's best pitch was his change, I know he was going to throw me that change. I was right about 80 percent of the time. That was why I was able to hit that changeup so good.

PP: Is there a pitch that you never want to see, even if you know it's coming?

Oliva: The knuckleball. Hoyt Wilhelm, I knew he would throw me a knuckleball. And that knuckleball was dancing so much. You know what's coming, and still you were lucky you hit.

Carew: It's like (Tim) Wakefield today. You know you're going to get the knuckleball, but one thing I didn't want him to do was throw that little fastball by me, so I forgot about the knuckleball. You can see the knuckleball, but when he throws that little fastball. …

Molitor: It seemed for a while the split-finger was the pitch. For whatever reason, certain guys would pick up the split-finger. Jack Morris — talk about guys that had a lot of good pitches and it was tough to cover all of them.

PP: Ted Williams used to say he could see the spin of the ball on a breaking ball. Could you?

Carew: I think psychologically, when you're going good you can see the spot on the ball. Psychologically. I can't go up there and say, yeah, I could see the seam of the ball. It's all upstairs. And when you're going bad, geez, you can't see anything.

Molitor: We talked earlier about mechanics. The hitter that can recognize the pitch out of the hand quicker and identify it (will succeed). When you're going well, it's like slow motion. Everything's slow. There's no rush and you're talking about less than a second of time to react. Sometimes you just feel like you can just stand there and see the pitch out of his hand and know what swing through muscle memory you have to put on that pitch to square it up. And then when things are going bad, all of a sudden everything's in fast motion. You're not picking up the slider. You're not picking up anything.

Carew: (Laughs) They're like aspirin. …

Molitor: The more you can get guys to think about slowing it down mentally and visually. …If you don't commit your body or your weight shift until you've recognized the pitch, that's what we've been trying to get guys to think about doing.

Carew: And most guys today, they're afraid to get jammed. I'd rather get jammed than …

Molitor: You can tell guys that hit with that fear. Their overriding thought is that I don't want to get beat by a fastball, and …

Carew: They fly open. Their mechanics are rushed.

Molitor: They don't stay back.

Oliva: That word right there — stay back. If you stay back you can do a lot of stuff. Watch all those guys — about 99 percent of guys have success every year, they stay back. They're able to hit breaking balls and they're not afraid to get jammed.

PP: What percentage of hitting is mental?

Oliva: You have to have the confidence that you know you can hit.

Carew: It's one of the most important parts of hitting. You can have the physical (tools), but between here (pointing to head) — what would you say, Paulie?

Molitor: I don't know if I can put a percentage on it. Rod talked a little earlier about failure, and hitting, more than most things in professional sports, includes a lot of failure. You talk about the three of us having how many hits? … Well, how many outs did we make? Twenty thousand? That's a lot of failure. You can't go up there letting that be a controlling factor. It's how you handle failure in a lot of ways that dictates how much success you're going to have.

Carew: You've got to relax and enjoy it at the plate. You've got to have fun when you're up there.

Molitor: When you get late in the game and you've got a guy coming up to the plate who's 3 for 3 as opposed to a guy who's 0 for 3, the guy who's 3 for 3, if nothing else, is going to be a confident hitter. If you can find that guy who's 0 for 3 and still confident, that's the guy you want. The guy that can isolate the at-bat and wipe that slate when he hasn't been successful early in the game, those guys are valuable.

PP: You have 26,669 at-bats between you, between the regular season and postseason. Can you actually recall vividly some of them, pitch by pitch?

Carew: I know, one I was playing a game in New York and I was facing Ed Figueroa, and he kept throwing me a slider down and in, and I kept rolling over and hitting the ball to second base. And the fourth time up, I was getting ready to go up and (manager) Gene Mauch looked at me and said, "What are you going to do this at-bat?" I said I'm going to take that slider and hit it out to left-center field. I'm just going to try and stay inside, and that's what I did. I hit a triple to left-center field. I remember that as vivid today as when it happened. It's discipline. You go up there with that discipline. I'm going to talk about it, but now I've got to go up there and I've got to execute.

Molitor: Not to get too corny about it, but I think one of my most memorable at-bats was in the game when Joe Carter hit the home run to win the World Series (Game 6, 1993, in Toronto). I came up there in the ninth inning, with a runner on base and trailing by one run in the bottom of the ninth. And every kid when he's in his back yard, or playing little league ball, thinks about coming up and hitting a home run to win the World Series. And that's what I was thinking about in the on-deck circle, that if I hit a home run we win the World Series. But I had to try to flush that thought aside and be more concerned with keep the inning moving, try to get a base hit, don't hit the ball over the fence, because that's not what I did. So I'm facing Mitch Williams, and I hadn't had a lot of success against him, but I just told myself, keep it short and try to hit a line drive, and I remember I got a line drive to center field. And then Joe (batting next) ends up hitting the home run. I remember fighting the urge to try to hit a home run to win a World Series — which I think I had done a lot of time in the back yard.

Oliva: I had a couple that I remember.

Carew: The one where you threw the bat at the ball and hit?

Oliva: No …

Carew: The bat was out of his hands, and he hit a line drive over the shortstop. I'm like, "Come on. That's sick."

(All laugh)

Carew: I'm serious.

Oliva: It happened more than one time.

(Louder laughing)

Carew: Another time a guy threw a ball and he bounced it, and then he hits a line drive. "What am I looking at here?"

(More laughing)

Oliva: I like anything low. I don't care if it bounces. … But I remember once when we were playing Chicago. They had (Goose) Gossage. It was two outs, ninth inning, and some weak hitter was hitting. I pick up my bat and I walk to go up the stairs. Two out, ninth inning, man at first. Now Gene Mauch say, "Tony, Tony, you're going to hit next, I want you on deck to pinch hit." I remember that superman was there, Gossage. Now, ball one, strike one, ball two, strike two, ball three, and he throws me a slider — I don't know how I hit that ball, but I hit it — Pow! I hit that ball right in the foul pole. It went for double, but the guy on first base scored, and the next guy gets a base hit and we win the game. But it was unbelievable. We used to call him Superman.

There was another one. (Kansas City pitcher) Dave Wickersham — he don't throw hard. He threw a sinker, slider. He knocked me down, and I don't know why — he's a very nice guy.

Carew: (smiling) This is a true story.

Oliva: The first pitch — boom! — I was on the ground. What surprised me was that he was a preacher and I didn't know they would do something like that.

(All laugh)

Oliva: And the next pitch, he threw me a slow slider. I hit that ball so far I hit that ball out of old Kansas City ballpark. Carew was there — a witness. That ball took off and went out of stadium and the other side of the road there was this green house, and I hit it on top of the house.

(All laugh)

Carew (laughing hard): Somebody came out with a towel and started waving this white towel.

Oliva: I hit that ball 517 feet. Stuff like that you remember forever.

Carew: And it was a situation where Wickersham almost drilled him in the head. And Tony went right back in the box.

Oliva: I consider myself a very lucky person, because I got hit in the head many times. I got hit in the head in Baltimore — you know the TC (on the helmet)? Steve Barber, hit me right here. Broke the TC. I went to hospital for two days. And when I get out of there, I come back to the ballpark on a Sunday morning, and that day I pinch hit and hit a double. I got lucky. Most time when somebody gets hit in face, it takes a long time (to come back). But I get hit in the head, I get better, I don't know.

Carew: And that's something else. Hitting is a lot easier today.

Molitor: Because they're protected more.

Carew: In spring training, I remember (Bob) Gibson knocked me down a couple times because I was trying to fix the dirt at home plate. I remember hitting a line drive off of (Don) Drysdale — foul, wasn't even close to being fair — down the third-base line, and the next pitch was right at my neck, and the guys are over on the other bench laughing. Now you can't go in. They don't want pitchers to go in and brush guys back. It's OK to brush a guy back as long as you don't throw at his head. … I think a lot of guys today get hit more because a lot of them are diving into pitches.

PP: But some things never change, right?

Carew: The basic thing is we got the head right to the ball and did it consistently. I think that's more important than anything else. … Prepare in BP and then get in the game. It all goes from there.