Presented by POOL SCOUTS.
This Day In Sports…June 5, 2015, 10 years ago today:
Pat Venditte makes his big league debut for the Oakland A’s, and in the process becomes the first true ambidextrous pitcher to appear in the majors in modern baseball history. Wearing a special six-fingered glove, Venditte pitched two scoreless innings in relief in the A’s 4-2 loss to Boston and threw 16 pitches from the right side and 12 from the left. He allowed one hit and had one strikeout. It was certainly a unique moment. The East Oregonian newspaper in Pendleton mistakenly reported Venditte’s milestone outing with the headline, “Amphibious Pitcher Makes Debut.”
Venditte already had a baseball rule named after him. When he made his minor league debut in the New York Yankees system with Staten Island against the Brooklyn Cyclones on June 19, 2008, umpires were at a loss as to how to handle him. Venditte pitched a scoreless ninth inning, but the last Cyclone to face him, Ralph Henriquez, was a switch hitter. When Henriquez stood in the box as a right-handed batter, Venditte would set to throw with his right hand. Then Henriquez would switch sides, and Venditte would promptly switch hands.
They went back and forth several times. It was kind of like the Harlem Globetrotters continuously crossing the lane during a Washington Generals free throw. Finally the home plate ump said, “Enough!” He declared that the batter must choose his side of the plate, followed by the pitcher selecting which arm he’d use. A couple weeks later, the “Pat Venditte Rule” was adopted by the umpires association, which reversed the process. An ambidextrous pitcher would have to first reveal which hand he’d throw with—and would have to stick with that through the entire at-bat.
It was a heckuva journey just to get to the majors. Venditte pitched for 12 different minor league teams in the U.S. and Mexico over parts of eight seasons before finally getting called up by Oakland. After one season with the A’s, Venditte later “switch-pitched” for Toronto, Seattle, the L.A. Dodgers, San Francisco and Miami. In five big league seasons, he made 61 appearances and had a 2-2 record with a 4.73 ERA.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
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