at-bat

The power of power, you know?

The power of friendship, the power of persuasion. Power of positive thinking, power at the plate.

Megan Grant’s power.

If there’s one thing in American sports that’s going to get people to sit up, lean forward and engage, it’s the home run. We all dig the long ball.

If anything can get someone to run home and turn on a softball game, it’s a big-time slugger from a big-time school mashing homers like nobody before.

Heard about Grant? She’s the UCLA softball player who’s hit an NCAA-record 40 home runs (so far) this season.

UCLA senior Megan Grant leans over and holds her helmet between pitches during a super regional game against UCF on Friday at Easton Stadium.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Forty! In 147 at-bats! That’s a home run every 3.68 at-bats!

If you’re wondering, Mark McGwire hit a home run every 7.3 at-bats in 1998, the year he finished with 70. And Barry Bonds went deep every 6.52 at-bats in 2001, when he hit his MLB-record 73 home runs.

Whenever she gets asked about her historic home runs, the red-hot, red-haired hitter is like, shucks: “I mean, it’s incredible,” she said. “I’m just honestly blessed to be able to say the number 40. But, yeah, that’s all I can say.”

She just wants to be thought of as a hard worker and a good teammate. But what Grant is going to be remembered for most is as the founding member of softball’s 40-home run club.

Her 40th home run came in her 58th game this season and on her seventh career grand slam — Grant Slam? — in the Bruins’ NCAA regional final victory over South Carolina last weekend.

Forty, a round number of round-trippers with a ring to it. And a sweet echo coming so soon after the Bruins women’s basketball team won its first NCAA championship, history to which Grant also contributed as a reserve before softball beckoned.

Side quest completed, the left-handed-hitting senior stepped back into the box to help the Bruins chase a 13th championship on the softball field.

Grant is soaking up the experience, and encouraging her younger teammates to, too: “‘Enjoy this, it’s so rare to be here’ … and, ‘Hey, we can do this, we can do it together.’”

A .469 hitter, she leads the nation in slugging percentage (1.333), on-base percentage (.650) and OPS (1.983). She bats second in UCLA’s NCAA record-breaking lineup that shattered Oklahoma’s 25-year-old previous record of 160 home runs. UCLA hit seven home runs during two super regional wins against Central Florida this weekend to push that record to 200.

With a 9-1 win Friday and a 14-4 victory Saturday, the Bruins advanced to the Women’s College World Series for the 34th time and for the third time in Grant’s astounding tenure.

UCLA senior Megan Grant (43) high-fives teammates during a win over UCF Friday at Easton Stadium.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Tip your helmet and toss Grant her bouquets — flower power — because there she is popping up on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and on the MLB Network. One of three finalists for the USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year award, she’s got guys discussing her exploits on a dad pod otherwise dedicated to NBA takes. Fans dressed up as chefs as a tribute to her nickname, “Chef Megan.”

Star power, power broker. Grant is a lift-all-boats attraction for a sport that’s been steadily carving out space in the public consciousness.

All over the country, college softball teams have been breaking attendance records. And ratings are up, up, up; ESPN said this has been its most-watched college softball regular season since 2009, with games averaging 292,000 viewers. The MLB-backed Athletes Unlimited Softball League is entering Season 2; Grant was drafted No. 4 overall by the Portland Cascade.

“People will pay to see her play,” said Lisa Fernandez, UCLA softball legend and associate head coach.

Fernandez also is the general manager of the AUSL’s Utah Talons, for whom UCLA’s other senior slugger Jordan Woolery will play this summer.

The Bruins imported the latest in a lineage of Bay Area dynamic duos. The Oakland Athletics had the Bash Brothers, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire; the Golden State Warriors gave us the Splash Brothers, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. And now UCLA has Walnut Creek’s Woolery and Grant, of San Bruno — the Bruin Bombers.

They’re the first teammates in NCAA history to each hit 30-plus homers in the same season, with 74 between them.

And, yes, chefs! Like Curry before her, Grant is cookin’ the competition, breaking the 31-year-old NCAA single-season home run record with No. 38 on May 9 against Nebraska.

Included among the record wreckage she’s leaving in her wake: Stacey Nuveman’s UCLA single-season record of 31 homers. For her career, Grant needs only one more to tie Nuveman’s Bruins record of 90.

But Grant’s got to get a pitch to hit first. After UCF walked her six times in two games, she has 74 walks this season and 69 base hits. She also has 13 hit by pitches.

“It’s very similar to Barry Bonds, right?” Fernandez said. “It’s either a walk or a home run. Like, you pick.”

The tale of the tape measure behind Grant’s greatness is the down-to-the inch precision of her preparation. The Mamba-esque magic is in the embracing behind-the-scenes monotony, powering through it.

“She was the hardest worker, always working. Never enough,” said Ray McDonald, Grant’s coach at the San Mateo-based Warrior Softball Academy since she was that kid with an electric, bat-busting swing. “It was eating and sleeping, hitting, and you know, shower. The essentials.”

“When we recruited her, Ray, he was like, ‘Coach, you better be ready to work,’” said Fernandez. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, I know how to work.’ And [then] I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, now I understand how people must have felt when I played.’

“There is an aspect of this game that people don’t realize unless you are in it. To be great, there’s a — for lack of a better word — monotony to the process. Can you master the same move over and over again? And she’s committed to it. To her drills, to the process, to her routine, all of it. There’s a lot of people who are committed to it when they’re not doing well: ‘Oh, got to get back to my drills.’ She has been committed to that process from the day she stepped on campus.”

The process includes working on her mind. That deep, deep breath before every deep, deep home run is a way to stay centered. To stay in the moment — and it is a moment.

For softball. For UCLA. For Grant, who, with all this power and responsibility, is hitting it out of the park.

ST. LOUIS — Andy Pages tapped the top of his helmet as plate umpire Chris Guccione wound up to punch him out, taking one final stab at extending the Dodgers’ scoring opportunity in the eighth inning.

The Busch Stadium scoreboard lit up with a graphic of the strike zone. The ball flew in, touching the top of the rectangle and turning it red. The call was confirmed. Strike three.

In a 7-2 loss to the Cardinals on Friday, that was one of six at-bats the Dodgers had with runners in scoring position. They didn’t record a hit in any of them.

Instead, the Dodgers (20-12) only scored on Max Muncy’s double with a runner on first in the second inning, and Kyle Tucker’s bases-loaded sacrifice fly in the sixth. It marked their third straight loss, scoring two or fewer runs in each.

“It’s been hard,” said left fielder Teoscar Hernández, who had a ground-ball single and a walk Friday. “Obviously, we don’t want to start the season the way we have started. But we have done a lot of work. Everybody knows this is not easy, hitting, being consistent. We just have to go up there trying to have good at-bats, create situations, put the ball in play, get on base.

“But I think we got unlucky. A lot of guys have been hitting the ball really good, right at people. But we control what we can control, and just leave the rest to baseball.”

Even amid a down stretch, the Dodgers still showed off their scoring power with a pair of 12-run performances in the last two weeks — even if one was at hitter-friendly Coors Field. And they entered Friday leading the majors with an .802 OPS. So all is not lost.

The top of the batting order, however, isn’t producing. Mookie Betts, who would be batting No. 3 in the order, has been out since early April with a strained right oblique.

Shohei Ohtani and Kyle Tucker have had slow starts. Freddie Freeman has been in an offensive lull since taking over the No. 2 spot last week.

The Dodgers entered Friday with the top three spots in the batting order producing a .734 OPS, ranking 22nd in MLB.

The bottom half of the order, and Pages in particular, was carrying the offense early on. But when those hitters cooled, the top of the order didn’t fill the gap.

“Unfortunately, we have a lot more guys that are not swinging the bats well than that are,” manager Dave Roberts said. “And so shuffling the lineup, I just don’t think that’s a solution right now — outside of versus left versus right [pitching matchups].”

On Friday, the Dodgers scored fewer runs than the Cardinals scored in the first inning alone.

“They swung the bat better than we did,” Roberts said. “And we didn’t play well enough.”

Dodgers right-hander Emmet Sheehan’s start went south in one at-bat.

Dodgers starting pitcher Emmet Sheehan delivers during the first inning Friday against the Cardinals.

(Dilip Vishwanat / Getty Images)

With two outs in the first inning and runners on first and second, Sheehan worked ahead to an 0-2 count against Nolan Gorman.

Dodgers catcher Will Smith then attempted a back-pick at second base, but his errant throw bounced to the opposite side of the base and past shortstop Miguel Rojas.

With runners at second and third, Sheehan did not declare he was going to switch to throwing from the stretch instead of the hybrid position. So, he was called for a balk, bringing the first run of the game across the plate.

“Mental mistake,” Sheehan said. “I know the rule. It was just in the moment, I didn’t declare it. And, yeah, unacceptable.”

Gorman battled Sheehan to a full count. Then Sheehan left a high fastball over the plate, and Gorman sent it into the right-field stands for a two-run blast.

Sheehan bounced back with a 1-2-3 second inning. But he surrendered a solo homer to slugger Alec Burleson in the third.

By the time Sheehan exited with two outs in the fifth inning, before Gorman was due up again, he’d given up a season-high eight hits.

“I feel like we’ve been making progress and then taking a step back,” Sheehan said. “And, yeah, it’s definitely frustrating. But we know we need to work on, it’s just fixing it now.”

The Cardinals (19-13) widened their lead in the seventh inning, putting together a three-run rally against reliever Edgardo Henriquez. And the Dodgers offense never threatened a comeback.

“We’re in a little funk offensively, which is certainly obvious,” Roberts said. “But you’ve just got to keep going. I believe in the guys, the hitting coaches do, the guys do. You’ve got to keep working and know that it will click one night and we all come together. But it’s not one at-bat. It’s not one particular hitter that is bringing the group down. We’ve all got to come together and expect things to change.”