An Epic Battle

I've been having some technical difficulties lately, which have kept all my posts from the past two weeks from actually appearing on the site. I've got it sorted out now, so I'll be posting some of the relevant stuff that was lost over the next few days. Today, however, I want to talk about last night's game between the Staten Island Yankees and the Brooklyn Cyclones. It might not be as important as the Yankees' seven game winning streak or Chien-Ming Wang's injury, but it's just too cool of a story to ignore.

You see, last night marked the professional debut of Pat Venditte, a reliever drafted by the Yankees in the 20th round out of Creighton University. Venditte, of course, is the pitcher who gained national attention last year for his ability to pitch with either arm. The advantage of being able to pitch right-handed to a right-handed batter and left-handed to a left-handed batter is obvious, but it raises the question of how to deal with switch-hitters. In college this question was answered by NCAA rules, which stated that Venditte had to declare which arm he was going to use before the first pitch. Thus, Venditte would have to give up his advantage and settle for forcing switch-hitters to hit from their weaker side. However, no such rule in professional baseball, so the question arises again: What happens when a switch-pitcher faces a switch-hitter?

Well, in the ninth inning of last night's game, the answer was "hilarity". After facing the first three batters of the inning as a right-hander, Venditte saw Cyclones DH Ralph Henriquez taking warm up swings left-handed and switched his custom made glove to the other hand. Seeing that he was now facing a lefty, the switch-hitting Henriquez stepped to the plate as a right-hander. Venditte then proceeded to switch his glove back. Henriquez responded by crossing over to the other side of the plate. The switch-pitcher and switch-hitter continued to dance like this, neither player willing to give up his advantage in a hilarious game of chicken. Finally, after discussions with the players and managers, the umpires ruled Henriquez had to bat right-handed and Venditte proceeded to strike him out as a right-hander. You can watch the whole eight-minute affair here.

There's still no word on how this will be handled in the future. There's no rule dealing with this situation in the Major League Baseball rulebook (which also governs the Minor Leagues), and the Professional Baseball Umpire Corporation manual only says "In the rare occasion of an ambidextrous pitcher, pitcher and batter may change positions one time per at-bat.", which isn't that helpful. Officials from MLB and PBUC are still figuring things out, but while they do I've got my own suggestion. As far as I can tell, there's no rule saying that a player has to use a glove at all. Since the glove is the only sign a hitter has of what arm Venditte will use before stepping into the batter's box, maybe he should just leave it in the dugout. That way, batters won't know where the ball will be coming from until Venditte is set to throw. That surprise could be an even bigger advantage than what he's already got. Plus, it'd be very, very cool.