In the process of hitting No. 55 and for a couple of games after that, Cabrera was looking for the pitch closest to a strike. But by continually going after pitches in the same postal code as his strike zone, pitchers stopped throwing even that close.
By the time the Lions got to Kobe last week, Cabrera was going after everything and his strike seemed to stretch from Venezuela to Taiwan.
No matter how long your arms are, you can't cover the strike zone Cabrera was building for himself.
While Cabrera could fall back on the notion that the Hawks and Fighters pitchers had given him precious little in the zone, things changed when the club's rain-delayed two-game series opened on Oct. 9 in Kobe. The BlueWave pitchers would alternate deliveries well outside the zone with ones down the pipe.
Asked how come he was missing fat pitches, Cabrera responded repeatedly with the cryptic response," You have to think of everything."
Indeed, he must have had a lot on his mind, but it is more likely he meant he had to prepare for pitches everywhere.
Not wanting to waste a single pitch, Cabrera instead wasted nearly every at-bat.
Asked if he would do anything differently if he could have the last five games back, Cabrera said he would have become more selective rather than less.
"I have to be prepared for five games. I be up there , I look for one strike. I don't care if I walk. Instead of of missing all those balls, I'm looking for one strike."
His teammates struggled mightily to reach base to increase the chances of getting their big bopper one more at-bat in each game.
His teammates could have gotten him 20 more trips to the plate and it wouldn't have mattered.
Tom Evans got a pinch hit that allowed Cabrera to come to bat in the ninth inning in the first game at Green Stadium. "I thought everyone was cheering for me at first," he said. "Then I realized it was because it meant he would bat again.
"All the guys were pulling for him," Evans said of the final inning at Chiba on Monday. "You could see us at the edge of the dugout, just trying to put a rally together so he could come up again.
"He was under so much pressure, with the home runs and the triple crown..."
Through the final week and a half, Cabrera was calm when it came to dealing with the pressure and all the attention.
His rants and raves were few and far between although Cabrera was critical of Hawks manager Sadaharu Oh--and for good reason. The Hawks threw four wide ones to Cabrera, which greatly increased the chance of the Lions tying the game--although it, very slightly, decreased the chances of the Lions scoring two runs instead of one.
The reason for the walk was to keep Cabrera even with Oh in the record books. It was a game-losing strategy, and Oh was wrong to sanction it. It was the third time he's sat on his hands while his players have played not to win but to protect Oh's record.
"He doesn't want me to break the record in front of him," Cabrera said. "He's not a professional. Go out and tell those pitchers to throw strikes."
Oh allowed his Giants players to do it in 1985 against Randy Bass, and his Hawks repeated the feat against Tuffy Rhodes last season. This year was far less heinous, but enough is enough.
In 1961, when Roger Maris hit 61 home runs, there was talk that U.S. commissioner Ford Frick wanted an asterisk next to Maris' record because he had, and needed, eight more games to break the record of Frick's close friend, Babe Ruth.
No asterisk was ever applied, but you know whose record needs one. From now on they should put a note next to his record saying he sanctioned the unsportsmanlike acts of his players to prevent his record from being equaled and broken.
As for Cabrera, he has a little more than a week to reflect and find the plate discipline he mislaid two weeks ago.
Sadaharu Oh, on the other hand, has the whole winter to find his missing backbone.
The Hot Corner appears each Thursday in The
Daily Yomiuri .