A story of Mom & Vlad

"His hand-eye coordination, it's unbelievable," says Mickey Hatcher, the Angels' hitting coach since Guerrero's arrival in Anaheim. "I remember the first year, about the first month of the season he was kind of going through a [rough] time and shoot, I got letters and letters. But I always got the report, 'Let Vlad be Vlad because he's going to do it.'

"So I'm sitting there reading these letters and these people were riding him. And all of sudden the next month he hit about .400. He's hitting home runs [off pitches] that are bouncing in the dirt and all that kind of stuff and the same people write back saying, 'Just leave him alone, just let him play.' "

And as for that postseason slump two years ago, well don't even bother writing Hatcher about that because he doesn't recall it that way.

"I don't remember him struggling in the playoffs," Hatcher says. "He got us to Chicago. That Chicago series, we were all bad. We were burned out.

"That wasn't Vladimir Guerrero. It doesn't take one guy to [make] a team. The reason we're winning it right now is because we've got a bunch of superstars. And that's what a team needs to win. It doesn't take one guy."

Maybe not, but sometimes one guy can be the difference. And if Guerrero proves to be that difference this week, don't expect him to take credit for it.

"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit," Paul wrote in Philippians 2:3, "but in humility regard others as better than yourself."

Or, as latter-day disciple Erick Aybar said a bit more succinctly, sometimes the best way to lead is to follow.

"It's important when you have someone to help you, someone so famous like Vladdy," he says. "He doesn't walk in front with the rest of us behind. With Vladdy, everybody is the same."

Just not, perhaps, when they step to the plate with a bat in their hands.

kevin.baxter@latimes.com