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Editor's Note: This story appears in the July 16 edition of ESPN The Magazine.

From 60 feet 6 inches away, Kevin Youkilis looks a lot like a guard dog. You're trying to slip a pitch past him, and this damn hairy-chinned beast stands in the way, chained to the back of the batter's box, part Wade Boggs and part pit bull. Throw him a nasty breaking ball, and he lunges at it, fouling it off. Pump a fastball inside, and he fights it off. And finally, by the seventh or eighth or 10th pitch of the at-bat, the beast is poised to strike.

Youkilis, a 28-year-old first baseman, is no five-tool talent. He is not fast, he will never set home run records, and his peanut-butter-and-jelly swing will never inspire an Updike treatise. But he is relentless. "Every pitch to me is an at-bat," says Youkilis, sitting in front of his locker at Fenway Park.

That's what separates grinders like Youkilis from rank-and-file big leaguers. It's the thing that gets him through the 1,458 innings of a 162-game schedule, the mind-set that helps teams win. For Youkilis, the most important pitch of the year is always the next one, which might be lined for a hit or, at the very least, mined for information.

When Youkilis played Class-A ball for the Lowell (Mass.) Spinners in 2001, he struck out on three pitches in his first at-bat of a game -- fastball, changeup, breaking ball -- without taking the bat off his shoulder, and he stalked back to the dugout. "Why are you so mad?" asked Arnie Beyeler, the Lowell manager. Well, obviously, Youkilis explained with some exasperation, he had just taken a backward K on three offerings. "But you saw all his pitches," Beyeler said. "He's shown you everything he's got. Now you can go to work."

That lesson stayed with Youkilis, who already had a strong sense of the strike zone. He drew 73 walks in 64 games during his first summer in pro ball, drawing the attention of A's GM Billy Beane and writer Michael Lewis, who immortalized Youkilis in Moneyball as the Greek God of Walks. (Actually, Youkilis is not Greek at all; he's a Jewish kid from Cincinnati.) With an on-base percentage frequently over .400, he forced his way to the majors. This year, through June, he ranks among the American League's top 10 in batting average and OBP.

Setting his stance, the righthanded Youkilis stations his back foot at the very back of the batter's box -- as close to the catcher, and as far from the pitcher, as the rules allow. To say that his right foot is in the box would be like saying that a climber who is hanging onto a ledge by one finger is on the mountain; maybe some tiny particle of his instep is technically on the back line of the box but not the rest of his foot. This provides him milliseconds more to decipher a breaking ball from a fastball.

Youkilis enters his at-bats looking for a heater to hammer, and up until two strikes, if he doesn't get the pitch he wants in the place he wants it, he doesn't swing. It's as simple as that. And he wants to see as many pitches as possible. "First at-bat, first pitch, I'm taking," he says. Youkilis is trying to get a feel for the pitcher's delivery, his velocity, how much movement is on the fastball, the lighting in the park, his own balance.

Overall this season, he's taken the first pitch in 91.3 percent of his at-bats. Whether it's a ball or a strike, Youkilis will continue to look for fastballs, continue to bear down and discipline himself to swing only at pitches that are in his hitting zone. Advance scouts say that he is exceptional at making adjustments, at understanding how pitchers are trying to get him out. But Youkilis doesn't try to think along with the pitcher during an at-bat. "Some guys are good at guessing what's coming," he says. "Kevin Millar, he could say, 'Hey, with a 1-0 count, this guy is going to try to throw me a backdoor slider.' I can't do that."

Instead, Youkilis looks fastball until he's in a hole. "Then I use my hands a little more," he says.

"I shorten up my swing a little bit." This gives him even more time to react. Through June, Youkilis was hitting .305 on two-strike counts, more than 100 points better than the league average. Says an AL general manager: "Some hitters panic when the count reaches two strikes, because they don't feel equipped to deal with the pitcher's out-pitch, whether it's a good breaking ball or a changeup. But Youkilis is not afraid to hit with two strikes."

So his at-bats tend to drag on, as he takes pitches and fouls them off in bunches. He averages more than 4.1 pitches per plate appearance, among the league leaders. He knows his long ABs will frustrate the guy on the mound, because he has listened to Red Sox pitchers come back to the dugout griping after opposing hitters have done the same thing. "There is nothing better than when you have a 10-pitch at-bat and then get a hit," he says.

Some hitters will admit they drift mentally at times and give away at-bats, but when Youkilis is asked about this, he scrunches his massive brow. "I wouldn't say that I give away at-bats," he says. "I would say that sometimes, I might give in and swing at a pitch I don't want to swing at."

Two hours later, Youkilis faces Barry Zito. He's poised at the back of the box, squeezing the bat handle, staring out at the lefthander. The count reaches 2-1, and in these situations, Youkilis does not want to swing at anything soft and on the fringes of the strike zone. Zito spins a lollipop curve, down and away. Youkilis chops at it, hits an easy roller to short. After he crosses first base, he rips off his batting gloves and angrily sticks them into his helmet. He gave in, and he knows it.

But his guard is down only for a few seconds. The last pitch doesn't matter anymore. What's important is the next one, because each pitch is an at-bat, and each at-bat is the season.

Buster Olney is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.