Specialization helps prolong and athlete’s career
PITTSBURGH-It used to be that baseball players endorsed cigarettes, teams had politically incorrect Ladies Days and pitchers pitched until a “sore arm” forced them to stop. Times change. Today hardly anyone pitches complete games and lucky strikes are what the Pirates throw rather than smoke. Some crusty people sneer about pitch counts as though the lack of complete games has ruined baseball.
Warren Spahn was never on a pitch count, the argument holds. He wasn’t, and Hall of Famer Spahn pitched 5,243 innings in a career that didn’t end until he was months short of his 44th birthday.
Sandy Koufax wasn’t on a pitch count, either. Maybe he should have been. After pitching more than 300 innings in three of four seasons, Koufax retired at age 30. Doctors warned he could risk losing normal use of his left arm.
Cases like that are one reason baseball teams are so protective of pitching arms today.
Specialized relief pitching is another. Better to make a hitter face a different and fresher pitcher on his fourth time to the plate, having already sampled everything the tiring starter has to offer.
Money is an issue, as always. The Pirates already have more than $4 million invested in Bryan Bullington, who has yet to throw a pitch in the major leagues.
They lost more than $2.5 million on Bobby Bradley, a much-injured former No. 1 draft pick who was released earlier this summer.
Is baseball really that different than other sports that have evolved? Do people have any less interest in football now that players don’t line up on both defense and offense?
It’s been 45 years since Chuck Bednarik, the last two-way player, suited up for the Philadelphia Eagles.
Bednarik, who remains a hard case, dimisses noted tough guys like Ray Nitschke, Dick Butkus and Jack Lambert because they all left the field when their team got the ball.
Today’s NFL has players who are third down specialists. Kickers do nothing but kick these days, and sometimes there are separate kickers for field goals and kickoffs.
In the good old days, a kicker was a moonlighting position player. Hall of Famer Lou Groza played 13 seasons at offensive tackle before a back injury limited him to kicking. The Steelers had defensive tackle Lou Michaels do their placekicking for three seasons in the 1960s.
Today, it’s possible to earn a living as a long snapper, as Mike Schneck has for the Steelers.
You wonder if the people who complain about pitch counts lost interest in hockey when goalies started wearing masks.
– n –
The Pirates announced they will not raise ticket prices in 2006.
You wonder what justification they would have offered if they had.
– n –
ESPN’s “Quite Frankly with Stephen A. Smith” looks like a “Saturday Night Live” parody of a sports discussion show.
Correspondent John Mehno can be reached at: johnmehno@lycos.com