The Mairners were willing to lock him up longer, but Boone took a one year deal guarantee and voewed to reuturn to the free agent markert in a year. It might have been the best business decision that Booney has made since Bill Gates and his buddies decided to start microsoft. He hired a personal trainer for 100$ a day to supervise his one hour work outs five days a week. He visited his daddy, Bob Boone to fine tune his swing, keeping his arms and hands in perfect unison and studying old hitting tapes of himself, making sure he didnt deciate mechanically. Boone showed up at spring training looking like an "after" picture of a Charles Atlas ad. He added 15 pounds of muscle, eliminated the flub around his midsection and weighed in at around 192 pounds. He promptly went out and hit .344 in April with 22 RBI's and never stopped hitting, earinig the starting spot in the All - Star game played in Seattle. Yep, as the clean up hitter. "When I was told that I was batting cleanup, I thought it was funny," says Booney, who stole the line up card from the All - Star for a keep sake. "I guess that showes how good we are. " Boone who says he has learned a valuabel lesson in hitting simply by watching teammates Edgar and Johnny - O from the on deck circle, has never been in a longer groove, he has never felt stronger and he feels he can play at this level for at least another 5 years with his newly definded body. "I worked hard because I realized how imprtant this season would be for me," Boone says "and it's paying off. The motivation for me is that you always hear players in their early 30s lose a step. I wanted to skip losing that step. I wanted to feel like I'm 24 or 25 again"
"Besides, I just thought it was the rigght time to take care of myself." Boone pu on that SAME black suit and combed his sexy blonde streaked hair making sure it was just right and didnt look funny like Cammie's hair. And lemme tell ya Boone has never looked so good!!!!!! SEXY |