A Pitcher Who Can Come At You From Both Sides

I hope this guy makes it to the majors. He'd be fun to watch:

NEW YORK — Ambidextrous pitcher Pat Venditte can confound hitters — and umpires — when he's on the mound.

The umps working a game Thursday night between the Class-A Staten Island Yankees and the Brooklyn Cyclones had nothing to go by when Venditte made his professional debut, less than two weeks after getting drafted in the 20th round by the Yankees.

He pitched the ninth, and after retiring two batters and allowing a single, a switch hitter stepped to the plate for Brooklyn. That's hardly unusual. But it becomes intriguing against Venditte, a switch pitcher.

Things got a tad dizzying when designated hitter Ralph Henriquez, who had taken his on-deck circle swings as a lefty, entered the batter's box from the right side.

Venditte put his specially made glove (it has six fingers, two webs and fits on both hands) on his left hand, and got ready to pitch right-handed.

Henriquez then changed his mind and switched sides of the plate, because a batter sees the ball sooner when it is thrown by a pitcher using the opposite hand.

So Venditte shifted his glove to the other hand.

Then it happened again.

And again.

And again.

Apparently unsure of how the rules handle such an oddity, the umpires didn't stop the cat-and-mouse game until Venditte walked toward the plate and said something while pointing at Henriquez. Umpires and both managers then huddled and the umps decided the batter and pitcher can both change sides one time per at-bat, and that the batter must declare first.

The ruling favored the pitcher, since he gets to declare last.

About seven minutes after he first stepped in, Henriquez struck out on four pitches as a righty against a right-handed Venditte and slammed his bat in frustration. Staten Island won, 7-2.

This sounds an awful lot like a hoax The Angels played on their fans when I was a kid. I wrote about it in a previous post :

During Spring training the Angels' broadcast team talked about a pitching phenom named Henry Mountain Quadley who didn't wear a glove because he could throw 90+ mph with either hand. The batters didn't know which hand he was going to throw with. It sounded very realistic at the time, but of course when the season began, there was no Quadley.

I hope th guy in New York is for real.