One of the strangest – and in some offensively-challenged cases, funniest – sights in baseball is watching American League pitchers try to hit. And with the Yankees preparing for upcoming interleague play, there were the Bomber pitchers before last night’s game with Baltimore, taking their cuts at batting practice.
A day after Philadelphia starter Robert Person crushed two home runs and drove in seven RBIs, the Bomber pitchers were preparing for a month of interleague games. In ever pitchers’ stall there were brand new bats, and the sight of some of them swinging in batting practice was too much even for stoic manager Joe Torre to take.
When asked if he looked forward to seeing his pitchers hit, Torre – who led the NL in batting in 1971 and knows what a good swing is supposed to look like – sat back in the dugout, knowingly arched his eyebrow and said “You see I’m not there, am I?”
They did catch a break in that Arizona’s Randy Johnson will face them at the Stadium, and they won’t have to step into the batter’s box against the hard-throwing Big Unit, who makes all-star hitters (remember John Kruk?) look bad. But with series at Shea and in Colorado, there is still plenty of hitting to be done, an idea that some relished and others reviled.
“All pitchers think they’re good hitters,” said reliever Mike Stanton, who really is a good hitter from his days with the Braves. He’s a career .500 hitter, going 7-for-14 with two RBIs and two runs scored. He even had a multi-hit game against Philadelphia earlier in his career.
Said Stanton, “It’s fun for us, to get away from the daily grind. We all used to be something other than just pitchers. It’s always something you grew up doing, and then suddenly you give it up. They tell you you’re not allowed to do it anymore. So when they give it back to you and let you do it again, it’s a good day.”
A good day for some. Many of the Yankee pitchers are longtime American Leaguers to whom hitting is a foreign activity. And fellow reliever Ramiro Mendoza, who is 0-for-2 lifetime, is the first to admit with a rueful grin “I’m not a good hitter. I’ve never gotten a hit.”
Stanton enjoys hitting, and discussed how he’d switch from a 32-ounce bat to as high as 36, depending on how long he’s hit, how hard the opposing pitcher throws, or his own personal history against his foe.
Meanwhile, David Wells, who’s spent all of his 15 big-league seasons in the AL with the exception of 11 starts with the Reds back in ’95, wasn’t as exacting. He’s as perfect at the plate as he was on May 17, 1998, he’s never gotten a hit, and knows nothing about the art of hitting, except how to shut hitters down.
“It doesn’t matter whether I like it or not. We’ve got to go out and do our job. As long as I can go out and contribute is all I care about,” said Wells. When asked what kind of bat he was using, he shrugged “I don’t know. I don’t do a lot of hitting. I don’t know [bleep] about hitting. It’s not my bag baby.”
Probably the most meaningless batting practice was put in by Mariano Rivera. Rivera is a fine athlete, but as a closer, he’s never had a single at-bat and admitted “I’m just showing off. I don’t do it a lot. I don’t really like it. Pitching, now that I like. I’ll tell you what, you give me an aluminum bat, then we’re talking.”
Chances are opponents he’s closed down have said the same thing.
