Trotting Home ...with The Rangers' Mark Teixeira

THE BEST thing about this homer (left), which Rangers first baseman Mark Teixeira hit at the All-Star home run derby? He didn't have to run the bases. "My teammates say I have a bad trot," says Teixeira, and Michael Young agrees. "The worst in the game," says Young. "His feet weigh 30 pounds; he sounds like a stampede rounding first. He can hit it 500 feet, and we'll just be talking about that trot." It's not as if Teixeira hasn't had a chance to perfect his gait: At week's end he had 25 homers, second-most in the AL. "When I'm running, I'm thinking about the pitch, where I hit it, the score. I'm just thinking too much, and my trot gets messed up."

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