I started following Major League Baseball in the late 1950s. Growing up in the D.C. area, I had the privilege of listening to Bob Wolff and Chuck Thompson broadcast the Senators games on radio and television. I guarantee you, not once did I ever hear either man ? both Ford Frick Award honorees at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown ? use the two words that have become an integral part of today?s game.
Pitch count.
Pitch count? Wondering how many pitches a starter had thrown through X number of innings never occurred to me, and likely, not you either in those days. A starting pitcher would stay in the game until it was evident he could no longer retire anyone, and a reliever would trot in from the bullpen. The thought that there was an arbitrary number of pitches he?d be allowed to throw was never a consideration.
Some of you may recall a game at Memorial Stadium on Sept. 12, 1962. The late Tom Cheney of the Senators struck out 21 Orioles in a 16-inning, complete-game 2-1 win over the Orioles before 4,098 fans. Cheney threw 221 pitches that night and felt as strong at the end as he did in the first.
His manager, Mickey Vernon, later told me that he had checked on Tom?s pitch count in the 10th inning or thereabouts, saw that it was past 150 and asked him how he felt.
“He said he was OK, so I left him in,” Vernon said. “He knew he could come out whenever he felt like he was out of gas. [Catcher Ken] Retzer said Tom?s stuff was never better, so I just let it ride.”
Cheney pitched twice more that season, a loss to the Yankees in which he allowed two home runs to Mickey Mantle and a 12-strikeout win over Boston. Clearly, the extra pitches he had thrown in Baltimore had no lasting negative effect on his right arm.
Prior to my conversation with Vernon, I had never realized that pitches had been counted that long ago. It turns out they?ve been counted for quite a long time, but not until the late 1970s did they become an issue. You can blame it on free agency.
When free agency arrived in baseball, and six-figure salaries for pitchers became the rule rather than the exception, some front-office know-it-all decided that those big-money arms needed some protection.
When those salaries hit seven figures in the 1980s, pitch counts that neared 100 for starting pitchers became cause for alarm. Nowadays, many clubs institute strict pitch counts throughout their minor league systems. It?s not unusual for a late-season call-up to have never thrown more than 100 pitches in a game, sometimes less than that.
Inasmuch as big-money contracts in baseball are here to stay, the same can be said for strict pitch counts. Changing it would be as difficult as reviving the four-man rotation. By now, we know that common sense in the real world means little in the big leagues.
Is the game better off for it? Someone must think so.
Phil Wood has covered baseball in the Washington/Baltimore market for more than 30 years. You can reach him at [email protected].
