{"id":683302,"date":"2026-04-26T13:00:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T13:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/683302\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T13:00:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T13:00:24","slug":"rockies-mickey-moniak-channels-ted-williams-thanks-to-his-grandfather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/683302\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockies’ Mickey Moniak channels Ted Williams, thanks to his grandfather"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mickey Moniak is channeling his inner Ted Williams,<\/a> via his grandfather and his father. The ties that bind in baseball are long, strong, and lasting.\n<\/p>\n

Moniak entered the weekend on a tear that even the \u201cSplendid Splinter\u201d would admire. The Rockies outfielder\/designated hitter entered a three-game series vs. the Mets riding an eight-game hitting<\/a> streak in which he slashed .419\/.455\/.871 (1.326 OPS), with three home runs, five doubles, six RBIs, and a stolen base.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m bursting with pride and joy,\u201d said Bill Moniak, Mickey\u2019s grandfather, whom Williams tutored back in Bill\u2019s minor league days.\n<\/p>\n

Bill, 86, lives in an assisted-living complex near San Diego. The TVs there don\u2019t carry the Rockies games, but that doesn\u2019t mean Bill hasn\u2019t watched nearly every inning.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil they get this figured out for me, I\u2019ll keep watching on my phone,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a pain in the neck, but I keep watching on that little screen.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday, he watched his grandson hit two home runs during a 4-for-5 performance in Colorado\u2019s crushing, ninth-inning loss to the Padres<\/a> at Coors Field.
\n\"MickeyMickey Moniak, left fielder for the Colorado Rockies, hits a home run during Thursdays game against the San Diego Padres at Coors Field in Denver on Thursday, April 23, 2026. (Photo by Harmon Dobson\/The Denver Post)\n<\/p>\n

\u201cMickey was a heck of an athlete, and he could have been a big-time quarterback, but he always loved baseball, just like I did,\u201d Bill said. \u201cI remember from the time he was about 3 years old, he would carry around a little Wiffle ball and bat, and he\u2019d say, \u2018Papa, Papa, throw it to me.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

That 3-year-old kid blossomed into a baseball phenom that the Philadelphia Phillies selected No. 1 overall in the 2016 draft out of La Costa Canyon High School near San Diego. He received a $6.1 million signing bonus from the Phillies.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Mickey credits his grandfather and his father, Matt, who played briefly at San Diego State, for his love of the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy granddad was at almost every tournament,\u201d Mickey said. \u201cHe used to go with my dad and I to Arizona on baseball trips. I remember he was with us when we went to a tournament in Steamboat Springs when I was 10. He\u2019d take me to batting cages wherever we could find them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill grew up in the tiny borough of Youngsville in Warren County, Penn. The winters were too cold and snowy for the local high school to field a baseball team, but Bill, who stood 6-foot-2, 200 pounds, was a gifted outfielder and honed his skills in sandlot games during the summer.<\/p>\n

So gifted, in fact, that in the summer of 1958, he signed with the Boston Red Sox for the princely sum of $25,000. Coming straight out of high school, he was one of the first \u201cbonus babies\u201d the Red Sox ever signed. The left-handed hitter never made it to the majors, but played six minor league seasons. Bill finished with a .271 average and 26 career home runs.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

During spring training in 1961-63,\u00a0 Bill was instructed by Williams, who worked for the club as a special batting instructor after finishing his Hall of Fame career in 1960. Williams took a special interest in Carl Yastrzemski, who replaced him in left field and would one day join Williams in Cooperstown.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cTed was a good guy, but you had to do it Ted\u2019s way, \u201d Bill recalled. \u201cThere was no other way. And Ted was, shall we say, colorful, with his language.\u201d<\/p>\n

One morning during spring training, Williams brought out his fungo bat to hit fly balls to the Red Sox\u2019s young outfielders. They started razzing Williams, even though they were quite aware of his greatness. Williams had a career batting average of .344 and hit 521 home runs. He hit .406 in 1941, the last player to hit .400 in a season.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, why don\u2019t you hit the ball? You call that hitting the ball?\u201d We thought you were the great Ted Williams!\u201d<\/p>\n

It turns out that \u201cTeddy Ballgame\u201d didn\u2019t take too kindly to that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo Ted sticks his arm up in the air, like he always did, and waves everybody in,\u201d Bill recalled. \u201cHe says, \u2018OK, you smart-asses, we\u2019re going to handle this.\u2019 So he hit to us for probably an hour straight. I\u2019d never seen so many 400-foot fungo shots before. He was just hitting BBs. He\u2019d run us from one line to the other \u2014 left to right, right to left \u2014 over and over. We laughed so hard that day, I\u2019ll tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Bill\u2019s most memorable Williams story took place in a spring training batting cage. It\u2019s a story Mickey has heard, \u201cabout 100 times.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was having a great spring, hitting over .400,\u201d Bill recalled. \u201cBut Williams wanted me to hit his way. I told him, \u2018Ted, I don\u2019t feel good about this.\u2019 He says, \u2018Damn it, kid, try it my way.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"MickeyMickey Moniak, left fielder for the Colorado Rockies, jogs back to the dugout at Coors Field during Thursdays game against the San Diego Padres in Denver on Thursday, April 23, 2026. (Photo by Harmon Dobson\/The Denver Post)<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, I\u2019m 21 years old, so what am I going to do, tell Ted Williams he doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill ended up striking out four times trying out Williams\u2019 swing and stance. The next game, three more strikeouts.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I went back to my old way of hitting, and I hit a home run in my first at-bat and went 4 for 4,\u201d Bill recalled with a laugh. \u201cThe next thing I know, I see Ted, his arm up in the air, and he waves me over. He puts his arm around me, and says, \u2018If anybody ever tells you again how to hit a (blanking) baseball, you tell them to take it and shove it where the sun don\u2019t shine.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Bill hung on to the basic tenets of hitting that Williams imparted, and he passed those along to his grandson.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main thing that sticks out is what Ted Williams taught my grandfather about approach,\u201d Mickey said. \u201cThe basic idea is to know strikes, and know that you own the pitcher. Hit your pitch; the pitch you want. If he throws you a strike on the corner, tip your cap. One strike, you still own him. Two strikes, you choke up a little bit and put the ball in play. I don\u2019t choke up on the bat, but I get the idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mickey\u2019s dad has been a huge influence, too, but in a different way than Bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a young age, he was the parent who never pushed me,\u201d Mickey said. \u201cHe was a surfer and dirt biker \u2014 all of that Southern California stuff. But he was incredible. Any tournament I wanted to go to, he\u2019d get me there on the weekends. I was always dragging him with me to go hit, and he did it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sitting here without him. I always tell people that when I got drafted first overall, and I told him I didn\u2019t want to play baseball anymore, he\u2019d have been good with it. He was going to support me no matter what. But I always wanted to play big-league baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moniak needed support from both his dad and his grandpa during his up-and-down career with the Phillies. He spent parts of three seasons with the organization before being released. It was a similar story with the Angels, where a breakout 2023 campaign was followed by a subpar 2024 season. The Angels released him at the end of last year\u2019s spring training, and the Rockies swooped in and signed him<\/a> just before Opening Day to a one-year, $1.25 million contract. His .270\/.306\/.518 slash line with 24 home runs during his first season with Colorado earned him a one-year, $4 million contract to avoid arbitration.\n<\/p>\n

Moniak has been essential to the Rockies\u2019 rebuild, not just on the field but in the clubhouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cBehind closed doors \u2026 he\u2019s part of what keeps everything around here loose and keeps everybody ready to play,\u201d manager Warren Schaeffer said. \u201cWhat he provides off the field is just as big as what he\u2019s providing on the field, but he\u2019s in a really good place offensively, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not easy. As Williams famously said, \u201cThe hardest thing to do in baseball is to hit a round baseball with a round bat, squarely.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Mickey\u2019s baseball bond with his grandfather, it\u2019s still going strong.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe texts me after almost every game,\u201d Mickey said. \u201cHe always tells me, \u2018Grip it n\u2019 Rip it,\u2019 and he\u2019s been telling me that since I was a little kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

And 10 years after the Phillies picked him No. 1 overall, Mickey is gripping and ripping as well as he ever has.<\/p>\n

\u201cMickey\u2019s turned out to be a pretty good ballplayer, don\u2019t you think?\u201d his grandfather said.<\/p>\n

Want more Rockies news? Sign up for the Rockies Insider to get all our MLB analysis.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mickey Moniak is channeling his inner Ted Williams, via his grandfather and his father. The ties that bind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2405],"tags":[146,5,167,52,4316,1009,5021,86436,1222,853,3568,4,1027,144,168,185,86437,1804,9976,9130],"class_list":{"0":"post-683302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-rockies","8":"tag-arizona","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-colorado","11":"tag-colorado-rockies","12":"tag-coloradorockies","13":"tag-coors-field","14":"tag-designated-hitter","15":"tag-discovery-canyon-high-school","16":"tag-hall-of-fame","17":"tag-latest-headlines","18":"tag-mickey-moniak","19":"tag-mlb","20":"tag-more-rockies-news","21":"tag-philadelphia","22":"tag-rockies","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-steamboat-springs","25":"tag-ted-williams","26":"tag-the-denver-post","27":"tag-warren-schaeffer"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116471138817181028","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}