A: First of all, Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal are generational freaks of nature and there will never be a horde of them. Secondly, have you noticed the attendance jumps whenever Skenes and Skubal pitch? Fans love witnessing superior performances, whether it be pitching or a double dose of hitting and pitching from Shohei Ohtani, another attendance booster. To me, a dramatic, tense 1-0 game is more entertaining than a 13-12 slugfest.
Q: When Nick Lodolo came up with another blister, it reminded me of stories I heard about pitchers using pickle juice to toughen their skin and wouldn’t that work with Lodolo? — JACK, Miamisburg.
A: There was a rather successful pitcher who said he began getting blisters on his pitching hand in high school. When he got to the New York Mets, athletic trainer Gus Mauch suggested he immerse his hand in pickle brine between innings to toughen the skin. He did it and it worked. If Nick Lodolo wants to throw seven no-hitters he should do what Nolan Ryan did. And I suggest Bubbie’s Pickles if you are going to pour out the juice and eat the pickles.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Q: I have never understood why Vada Pinson is not in the Hall of Fame and what are your thoughts? —STEVE, Beavercreek.
A: I stand tall beside you. Pinson collected 2,757 career hits, 10th most among players not in the Hall of Fame. Not only could he hit, he could run and he covered the outfield like the dew on a humid morning. He once punched Cincinnati Post baseball writer Earl Lawson after he wrote Pinson should bunt more to use his speed. But even that didn’t stop Lawson from voting for him when Pinson was on the ballot. I also voted for him.
Q: Like Dave Concepcion, don’t you believe that Omar Vizquel’s numbers are worthy of the Hall of Fame? — KEN, Cleveland.
A: And I stand tall beside you on this one, too. With 2,877 career hits, Vizquel owns the eighth most hits of players not in the Hall of Fame. Both Concepcion and Vizquel are from Venezuela and worshipped Venezuelan shortstop Luis Aparicio, who wore uniform number 13 and is in the Hall of Fame. So Concepcion and Vizquel wore ’13’ in his honor. Was that bad luck? Aparicio, a 13-time All-Star, had 2,677 hits. Concepcion had 2,326 hits. Maybe the voters believe only one shortstop from Venezuela belongs. They’re wrong.
Q: Can you explain MLB’s International Free Agent System? — BOB, Belmont.
A: I can and I will... try. Players born outside the United States are not subject to the MLB draft. Players from Japan, Korea, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and even Lithuania — any player born outside the U.S. — is considered a foreign player and can sign with any team after they are 16. There is, though, a limit to the bonus money a team can give them. And if a team signs a player from the Japanese league, it must pay his team a negotiated sum for the rights to sign him. Why international players are not just included in the regular MLB draft makes no sense to me. It would seem more fair than having international players on the open market.
Q: I read that Yogi Berra sold shoes in the off-season to support his family before the big contracts, so what interesting jobs did some of those players have? — GREG, Beavercreek.
A: Ah, yes, even the biggest stars worked in the offseason to supplement their incomes. Yogi Berra also sold hardware and was a waiter in an Italian restaurant. Willie Mays sold cars, Jackie Robinson sold TV sets, Stan Musial sold Christmas trees, Jim Palmer sold men’s suits. The strangest, though, was Richie Hebner. He was a gravedigger in New England and told me one year, “The ground was so hard this winter we had to dig graves so shallow that some of those people may scratch their way out.”
Q: If a pitcher has a perfect game and it is tied, 0-0, if in the 10th inning he gives up a ground ball that sends the runner to third and he scores on a sacrifice fly, then the pitcher retires the next batter is he credited with a perfect game? — TOM, Mason.
A: There are things in baseball one believes will never happen, yet it seems every week something happens that never happened before. This is one of them and, yes, it could happen. The scorekeeper’s manual says that if a pitcher retires 27 batters without putting a runner on base, it’s a perfect game. In this instance, he did not put the ghost runner on base and he faced 27 batters with none reaching bases. Thus the pitcher is credited with a perfect game and the toughest loss in the history of the game.
Q: I am assuming that the batboy is provided by the home team, so what happens when school is in session? — ART, West Chester.
A: You assume correctly, the home team furnishes the batboy. Since most games are at night and most day games are on weekends, retrieving bats and furnishing baseballs to the umpire is no problem for school-age batboys. And if you were a 16-year-old high school sophomore, wouldn’t you commit a few truancies to wear a big league uniform on a Wednesday afternoon? I skipped school for a lot less glamorous reasons.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Q: Looking at a recent Cincinnati Reds lineup I noticed seven of the nine players came from other organizations, so what is stopping the Reds from bringing up more players from within their organization? — MIKE, Englewood.
A: That’s the state of the game with most teams these days. With free agency and trades, players move from team to team to team. It is rare these days for a player to remain with one team for his entire career. Most play for five or six teams. The Reds have some excellent players in their system that will be make it, but some won’t and will be traded. It is a matter of what a team needs at certain positions that determines how they fill it — from within, from free agency or from trades. It’s all very fluid.
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