A SWITCH PITCHER?

Just for fun, try throwing a wad of paper into the wastebasket with your opposite hand. Tough, isn’t it? Now try striking out a big-league hitter with your opposite hand. Here’s the story of an unconventional pitcher and the bizarre at bat that changed the rules of baseball.

MATCH GAME

In baseball, one of the key elements of pitcher/batter matchup strategy comes down to what hand they use. Typically, right-handed batters don’t perform as well against right-handed pitchers, and the same is even truer for lefties against lefties. Most batters, lefty or righty, don’t like to face southpaws, who have an uncanny ability to “paint the outside corner” of the strike zone, where it’s tough for righties to hit it. Lefties dominate lefties by taking away their main advantage of hitting well against right-handed pitchers. As a result, the left-handed specialist has become a key part of a team’s late-inning strategy. It also leads to longer games due to frequent instances of a left-handed pinch-hitter being brought in to face a righty, and then the righty is replaced by a lefty, and so on, and so forth. In the case of a switch-hitter, he can simply choose to bat from whichever side of the plate gives him the best advantage.

So why aren’t there any “switch-pitchers”?

BRANCHING OUT

There were a few ambidextrous pitchers in the 19th century, including Tony Mullane, who won 284 games while pitching with both arms. The practice died out after that… mostly. There was an ambidextrous pitcher named Greg Harris who played from 1981 to 1995, but none of the eight teams he played for let him pitch as a lefty until the second-to-last game of his career, when he got to pitch with both arms. A nine-year-old boy from Omaha, Nebraska, named Pat Venditte was watching that game and said to himself, “I can’t wait to do that too one day.”

Like Harris, Venditte is a natural right-hander. At the age of three, Pat’s father taught him to throw with his left arm as well, thinking it would give him an advantage. And it did. Venditte debuted his ambidextrous pitching style in Little League. (Some people mistook him for twins.) When he got to college, his coach wouldn’t let him use his specially made, symmetrical glove with two thumbholes. Reason: the coach didn’t want a “circus.” Even so, Venditte got drafted by the New York Yankees. He made his minor-league debut in 2008, where he was allowed to use his special glove…and the circus that his former coach had feared commenced.

Venditte made his debut as a relief pitcher for the Staten Island Yankees. The fourth batter he faced was switch-hitter Ralph Henriquez of the Brooklyn Cyclones, who walked up to the right side of home plate. It was the bottom of the ninth with two outs; Venditte was trying to preserve the lead. Venditte, who’d been pitching righty, switched his glove to pitch as a lefty. Henriquez asked the umpire if he was allowed to switch hands like that, only to be told there was no rule against it. So Henriquez walked around to the left side of the plate and squared up as a lefty. Venditte removed his glove and switched back to a lefty. Henriquez broke his stance and returned to the other side of the plate. “This is becoming a comedy show here,” remarked one of the announcers. This back-and-forth went on for seven minutes before the umpires finally had enough. They told Henriquez to stay on the right side. Venditte, pitching right-handed, struck him out to end the game.

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STAY IN YOUR LANE

You can thank that strange at bat for what’s known as the Pat Venditte rule, which took effect later that season. It limits how many times a pitcher and batter can change their stance during a single at bat. The rule states that “a pitcher must indicate visually to the umpire-in-chief, the batter, and any runners the hand with which he intends to pitch, which may be done by wearing his glove on the other hand while touching the pitcher’s plate.” In addition, the pitcher can’t switch hands unless he is injured during the at bat. One switch is allowed by both the pitcher and hitter during the at bat, but it can only happen once a pitch has been thrown. And the pitcher isn’t allowed any warm-up throws when he switches (so he’d better have loosened that arm in the bullpen, or he could injure it if he tries to pitch at full strength).

A CALL TO ARMS

After spending seven years in the minors, Venditte was called up by the Oakland A’s in 2015, and has pitched for a few other teams since then. He says he’s fully aware that many see him as a novelty. “Any time you’re different,” he remarked in 2018, after signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, “you have to convince people, and the only way to do that is with results, and that’s what I found myself doing with every outing.” Venditte has performed well thus far in his career, mostly throwing curveballs and fastballs, with the occasional changeup. His velocity is much harder throwing from his right side, because that’s his normal throwing arm. But he gets more curve from his left arm. As far as which arm he’ll use against any particular hitter, he leaves that up to the coaches. “To watch Venditte, it’s a remarkable thing to see what one person’s body is capable of doing,” said Boston Red Sox manager John Farrell after Venditte’s impressive major league debut. “Even guys in the dugout were kind of marveling.”

As of this writing, he is still the only ambidextrous pitcher in the big leagues. Perhaps there’s a both-armed up-and-comer who got inspired by Pat Venditte the same way Greg Harris inspired him all those years ago.

Sacré bleu! French women weren’t allowed to vote until 1944.