1.   An early favorite has to be Jim Lefebvre, a Valley resident who is currently a hitting coach with the Oakland Athletics.

2.   Among those who attended were former teammates Rico Petrocelli and Dwight Evans and former hitting coach Walt Hriniak.

3.   And Collins credited hitting coach Rod Carew for his advice to the hitters in a pregame meeting.

4.   And Pat Roessler was the major-league hitting coach there last year and is now our minor-league hitting coordinator.

5.   And the myth perpetuated by the Red Sox that Jim Rice is a terrific hitting coach has been exposed this season.

6.   Another new hitting coach hired last week was Wade Boggs, putting the Tampa Bay uniform back on one year after he retired as a player.

7.   As fate would have it, the Yankees recently fired Robinson from the job of Triple-A hitting coach.

8.   Bell missed his hitting coach, Tom McCraw, who was away for much of the year after prostate cancer surgery, but his numbers were still shocking.

9.   Braves GM John Schuerholz saw the opportunity to bring Baylor to Atlanta as a hitting coach and jumped at the chance.

10.   -- Hitting coach Jesse Barfield said rookie second baseman Carlos Guillen is one of those rare switch-hitters with the same mechanics from both sides of the plate.