Let's Go to the Videotape by Warner Wolf & Larry Weisman

Author:Warner Wolf & Larry Weisman [WOLF, WARNER]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOC052000
ISBN: 9780759523357
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2000-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

52

COUNTING PITCHES

One thing that bugs me is the pitch count. Most managers say, “That’s it, he’s thrown enough pitches” rather than, “What’s the score?” What makes this number so magical?

Do you think Bob Gibson ever cared about a pitch count? Before Game 2 of the ’98 Series, we asked El Duque (Orlando Hernandez) about a pitch count. He looked at us and said through an interpreter, “I pitched all over the world before I came to the Yankees in 1998. We never had a pitch count.”

I remember talking to Bob Turley, the Cy Young Award winner in 1958. He said nobody kept track of the number of pitches. You wanted to throw a complete game. Number one, it meant you were giving the day off to your bullpen. And, number two, that was a great bargaining point in your favor at contract time, how many complete games you had. The problem is, today that’s the way they teach it in the minor leagues, that you’re out of the game when your number’s up.

That’s the way these starters are brought up. They’ve got it in their heads that they’re not going nine. After six

innings they start looking at the bullpen. Plus, the managers are overprotective of these guys, because the club has invested millions of dollars in ’em. No manager wants to be responsible for overworking one of these precious arms.

I’m supposed to view the game with a professional’s detachment, but I’m a fan and I remember when I went to games strictly as a paying customer. We valued good pitching. Growing up in Washington, I started going to games at Griffith Stadium in the late 1940s and one of the great parts of the afternoon was when the starting pitcher would come to bat in the last half of the eighth and get a nice hand from the crowd. We knew this would in all probability be his last time at bat and our last chance to show our appreciation before he would take the mound in the ninth inning to go for his complete game.

You rarely see that anymore. Of course, you’ll never see it in the American League because of the DH. And you won’t see many complete games, either. Blame it on the pitch count.

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