Goodbye, The Hitting Pitcher.
Your name was a juxtaposition, your very existence saturated with irony; the man assigned the task of getting outs, suddenly thrust into the opposite role. The spectacle of watching you was something unique to all of sports, reminding us – the ordinary fan – of the difficulty, at times the seeming impossibility, of doing the exact thing our favorite sport is based on; hitting the baseball. It gave us the opportunity to imagine ourselves up there in the batter’s box, keeping our egos in check, and realizing that as bad as you often looked, we ourselves would look even worse.
And we forgave you for this folly as well, and let’s be honest by and large it was a folly, so long as you delivered on your promise of six or more innings pitched, ideally allowing three runs or less. That was the beauty of it. Forgiving incompetence at one skillset, to afford mastery of a different one, and one more important to the team’s success at that.
But every now and then you would give us a magical moment, a moment akin to finding a twenty-dollar bill in an old pair of jeans, or winning a free game at the arcade; playing with house money as they say. You would stick out your bat, and sometimes with skill, but more often with luck, the ball would find wood and go sailing into the outfield for a hit; usually the least forceful, but most exciting contact of the day. Sometimes the gift of a jacket was waiting for you when you got to first base, a luxury not afforded to any other player on the team, and a less than subtle reminder that you had infiltrated a place you did not belong.
In even rarer instances, likely as a result of sheer probability, your bat would meet the ball in that perfect way to send it flying, deep, majestically, and into the crowd. The most beautiful of such events occurred on May 7th of 2016, when one of your most notable members, Bartolo Colón, hit his one and only home run. With a physique more akin to a fan than a professional athlete, he became the oldest player ever to hit his first home run at 42 years of age. It is a record that may never be broken, and a record that you my friend, not the hitters, own. There may never be a moment so big, and so sexy in baseball ever again.
Perhaps I am selling you a bit short. There were members of your ranks that did you justice, that did hit the ball regularly, helping dispel the myth that your kind were not athletes to the same degree as the rest of the players, or that a bunt in all situations was the most you could offer to your team while holding a stick. Just to name a few, Madison Bumgarner, Wes Ferrell, and Bullet Joe Bush all held their own at the dish as well as on the bump. In fact, one of the greatest hitters began his career as one of your finest, as George Herman Ruth of the Boston Red Sox, not Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees as he would later become; calling his shots and terrorizing your ranks, a constant reminder of his betrayal to the enemy. He was just a hitter now.
It was not until 1973, over one hundred years into your life, that you took your first major blow. Half of the baseball, the entire American League, in fact, had decided they no longer required your services. Some of you would become pitcher only, POs as the jargon went, replaced by a designated hitter, his job description now as constricted as yours. The spectacle of your fleeting attempts to hit a ball, and the bunts, pinch hits, and double switches such ineptitude manufactured, replaced by lumbering sluggers, their athleticism as in question as yours.
But times have changed my friend, and it is only natural that all things must end. Over time your ranks have diminished, with pitchers throughout high school, college, and the minor leagues all relinquishing their hitting duties to more capable batsmen. It makes sense that in a time where you as hitting pitchers have less experience than ever before, you are not forced to hit for the first time since little league on the stage where hitting is the most challenging and dangerous. You are a precious commodity after all. The designated hitter, too, is becoming more respected, with a few now finding themselves enshrined in the Hall of Fame, and there is no question that the new offensive threat provided adds its own exciting dimension to the game.
As your era comes to an end, you can rest easy knowing that you went out with a bang. Perhaps it is fitting that your last season will be known as the year of the hitting pitcher, as Shohei Ohtani snatched the MVP award with the greatest year a hitting pitcher has enjoyed, doing both to the highest level they have ever been done at the same time, and in the American League no less. Maybe it gives you hope that you will be resurrected someday, with Ohtani carrying the torch into the future, proving there are those still worthy to do both in this more specialized world. There are others, like Jacob deGrom, who himself is not so far off from being able to compete as a hitter, despite the new rules. Perhaps it is as ironic as your very identity that Ohtani, the last of your ranks, stands in as a DH – the very position that has relegated your existence to the record books – more often than his true position on the mound.
No matter what the future holds, know that we the fans will never forget you and your rightful place in baseball at its purest form. And maybe, just maybe, we may see you again when we least expect it.
Goodbye, The Hitting Pitcher
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