By TIM BONTEMPS
June 20, 2008
Switch hitters have become commonplace in baseball. But the first professional appearance for Pat Venditte, a "switch pitcher" for the Staten Island Yankees, was met with plenty of confusion last night in the Baby Bombers' 7-2 loss to the Brooklyn Cyclones.
The ambidextrous reliever changes his pitching delivery from left-handed to right-handed based on which side of the plate the batter is hitting.
The problems began when Venditte came on in the bottom of the ninth. Brooklyn's switch-hitting DH Ralph Henriquez came to the plate with two outs and a runner on first. Henriquez lined up on one side of the plate, then Venditte would switch to pitch from that side. Henriquez goes left-handed, so does Venditte. Henriquez goes right side, Venditte would go right-handed.
The rule governing both switch hitters and pitchers is once the player commits to hitting or pitching from one side, they are allowed to switch one time during the at-bat. The rule, however, doesn't specify whether the hitter or the pitcher is forced to declare first. Because of that, both Venditte and Henriquez began switching sides of the plate repeatedly, and the display eventually led to S.I. manager Pat McMahon and his Brooklyn counterpart, Edgar Alfonso, getting involved in discussions with home plate umpire Shaylor Smith and first base umpire Tim Eastman.
After a few minutes of discussion between all parties, the umpires ruled the hitter should declare first. Henriquez then chose to hit right-handed, so Venditte pitched right-handed to him and struck him out to end the game.
Venditte, a 20th round selection in this year's First-Year Player Draft out of Creighton, began throwing from both sides when he was three years old.
"I'm naturally right-handed, but my dad taught me how to throw from the left-side as I was growing up, and I kept working on developing it ever since," Venditte told The Post earlier this week.
