The Rare Beauty of the Unconventional Weapon
I’m a sucker for sportspersons doing something a bit different. Putting both left and right handed, for example. Or Ronnie O’Sullivan swapping the cue from hand to hand rather than needing to use the rest. So when Pat Venditte made his major league debut for the Oakland Athletics I was certainly taking note. Venditte is the rarest of breeds: a major league pitcher who can pitch with both arms. The switch-hitter has been around for a long time but the switch-pitcher? Well, that’s Venditte.
Pat Venditte warming up in the bullpen. (credit to MLB.com & Boston Globe)
Note the colour of his name in the official lineup card for his MLB debut… he’s the first pitcher to be written in blue, treated just like a switch-hitter.
#athletics today pic.twitter.com/RDsS1HIAkc
— John Shea (@JohnSheaHey) June 6, 2015
So I thought it was time for an Irish Times column looking at a few unconventional sportspeople and strategies. Published in the print edition of Wednesday, June 10th 2015.
Last Friday night 29-year-old pitcher Pat Venditte made his Major League Baseball debut for the Oakland Athletics. Drafted by the New York Yankees in 2008, Venditte (pronounced ven-det-ee) would toe the rubber on a big league mound for the first time in Boston’s Fenway Park. A new tale would be added to that marvellous little ballpark’s storied past: the debut of the first full time switch-pitcher of baseball’s modern era.
A rule was created for him and a new position designated: switch-handed pitcher (SHP). To face his first opponent, Brock Holt, Venditte would pitch left-handed before switching his glove (worn on the opposite hand to the pitching arm) from his right to left hand. He would pitch right-handed to the next man up. The switch-pitcher. Two major league arms in one, a strategic boon for his manager, Bob Melvin, and the team’s general manager, the ever-resourceful Billy Beane.
Ambidextrousness as tactical advantage. Native American PGA golfer Notah Begay carried a double-bladed putter which he used either right- or left-handed depending on the break. Snooker’s Ronnie O’Sullivan famously uses the rest less than most; where some might need that extra bit of lumber O’Sullivan might pop the cue into his left hand and carry on.
The GAA had Maurice Fitzgerald, the mercurial Kerryman able to shoot delicious, arcing frees with either foot from the appropriate touchline…
