Blake Hall
Brand new Oakland Athletic hurler Pat Venditte is a journeyman right-hander.
No, wait. He’s a left-hander.
Scratch that, again — all apologies — he’s both.
For the first time in over 20 years, an ambidextrous pitcher will be on a Major League Baseball roster, in the form of the 29-year-old left-hander/right-hander who you can see in this clip from 2008 when he was a young chap in the minor leagues playing for the Staten Island Yankees, and spawned a bit of an incident.
The crux of it was this: with a pitcher who can throw with either arm, the batter (especially if they’re switch-hitters themselves) needs to know which arm is going to be throwing the ball. It became such an issue that the Professional Baseball Umpire Corporation came up with a new rule, and slugged it with Venditte’s name.
It’s now known as the Venditte Rule.
The rule states that the pitcher — before he toes the rubber — must indicate which arm he plans on pitching with. Pretty straightforward, no?
For the record, the last ambidextrous pitcher to make it to the bigs was Greg Harris, who had a cup of coffee with the Montreal Expos in 1995.