Pie able to ace his first exam under Keller

Advanced hitting school was in session during the 3 o'clock hour Monday afternoon.

Felix Pie wasn't at the head of the class. He was the class.

Pie, the protege, was in the Wrigley Field batting cage. Dave Keller, the mentor, lectured to him from beside it.

"To me," Keller would say later, "it's just a progression of him learning about his swing."

The Cubs wouldn't have arranged this crash course if Pie weren't important to their National League Central title hopes.

Pie was supposed to grab the center-field job this semester, er, season and ride it right into the playoffs. Instead, he struggled to a .143 batting average prior to Keller's arrival this week.

The easy thing to do is send Pie to the minors -- back a grade, so to speak -- and let new fan favorite Reed Johnson have his job. But the Cubs chose to bring the lesson plan to Pie.

Cubs manager Lou Piniella likes having Pie's glove, arm and legs. Even with his struggling bat he'll be more valuable than the one-dimensional Matt Murton when Alfonso Soriano returns from the disabled list.

Piniella used Pie as a defensive replacement in Monday night's 7-1 victory over the Mets.

Pie proceeded to pass his first exam in Keller's class by hitting a 3-run home run in his only at-bat.

"That had to be a good feeling for that young man," Piniella said. "He's been working hard over the last 10 days or so. I'm happy for him."

The feeling also had to be good for Keller, the organization's hitting coordinator. He has worked with Pie for five years, earned his trust and converses with him in Spanish.

Pie answered in baseball-speak during class Monday afternoon -- a line drive into the left-center gap. Keller made a hand gesture that looked to mean "line drive." Pie responded with a liner that bounced to the center-field wall.

The midday sun was warm. As meaningful as the line drive was the sweat on Pie's head and face.

"The best thing about Felix since I've known him is he'll work," Keller would say after watching myriad swings.

The next best thing about Pie might be that he's coachable. Keller said, "He's always been that way. He's all ears."

Yet Pie only blips brilliance. Keller is trying to get him to routinely repeat those moments.

At some point the light has to go on. If it doesn't, Pie will be just another phenom who enrolled with a clamor, flunked out and went back down with a murmur.

Pie sprayed the ball to all fields in early batting practice. He was like 3 o'clock lightning that must be refined into 7 o'clock thunder.

"You're still out away from your body too much," Keller said to him, lapsing into English.

Pie smacked a pitch down the left-field line, listened to Keller again and pulled another ball foul into the right-field stands.

"You can have a guy be perfect in the cage," Keller would say later. "Then he goes out to the field and starts to lose it a little. It's easy to revert to old habits."

Keller's current assignment is to get Pie to repeat new habits and graduate into a legitimate major-leaguer.

The homer against the Mets was a start, but the final exam is many at-bats away.

mimrem@dailyherald.com