Selig should be proactive in protecting pitchers

Sporting News, The, Oct 2, 2000 by Ken Rosenthal

Commissioner Bud Selig says nothing can be done about pitchers getting smashed in the face by line drives, and almost everyone involved with Major League Baseball shares his opinion.

That mindset must change, and change quickly, before a tragedy Occurs.

"We're close," Orioles pitcher Mike Mussina says.

"One of these days, we could have a fatal situation," adds broadcaster and former major league pitcher Jim Kaat.

Nothing can be done?

If a pitcher is killed by a batted ball, no one will want to hear that it was part of the game and could not be avoided.

Selig cites a long history of pitchers getting hit, most notably when Herb Score's career was ruined by a Gil McDougald line drive on May 7, 1957.

Kaat, a 16-time Gold Glove winner, estimates he threw 70,000 pitches in his 25-year career and was hit only twice.

"The odds are, you're not going to be hit," he says. "But when you are, it's scary."

Ask Mussina. Ask Chris Carpenter. Ask Bryce Florie.

Mussina suffered a laceration above his right eye and a displaced nose fracture when he was hit by a Sandy Alomar Jr. line drive May 14, 1998.

Carpenter required 18 stitches to close a gash on the inside of his mouth after getting hit in the right cheek by a Jose Valentin line drive September 16.

And Florie is legally blind in his right eye after undergoing surgery to repair severe fractures of the bones around his eye socket and nose.

Florie's injuries occurred when he was hit by a Ryan Thompson line drive September 8. At age 30, his career might be over.

Yet Selig offers little more than a shrug.

"Everyone is concerned, but everyone says,

`What can you do about it?'" Selig says. "I'm not sure I have an answer. I'm not sure there is an answer."

Maybe Selig is right--Mussina and Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer are among those who echo his sentiments.

Some believe the real danger is in the college game, where hitters still use aluminum bats.

But Kaat argues that the current dynamics of the majors--stronger hitters, lighter bats, harder balls--create the same effect.

"Right now, a big-league hitter with these balls and bats, it's like putting an aluminum bat in their hands," Kaat says.

Rather than wait for a tragedy to occur--and a national scandal to ensue--Selig and Co. should start asking hard questions.

Players, coaches, scouts and general managers raise a variety of concerns when asked what baseball could do to improve pitchers' safety.

Something--perhaps many things--can be done.

* Allow pitchers to work inside. That's fight, start at the beginning. Start by correcting the faulty tendencies of umpires and the testy demeanors of hitters.

Many hitters now wear protective equipment, reducing their fear of the inside pitch. They dive over the plate to wallop outside pitches up the middle, knowing the inside strike won't be called.

"Guys don't pitch in as much," Braves reliever Terry Mulholland says. "And when you pitch away and you don't get it away far enough, a hitter is going to get a good part of the bat on the ball."

* Raise the mound. "You can't move the mound back--that would completely screw up the game," Mulholland says. "I would say maybe raise the mound, give us a little different angle and approach to the plate."

Kaat also endorses this idea, but don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen. MLB executives consider any change that might lead to fewer 12-10 games a threat to their stock portfolios.

* Soften the balls. Those, of course, are more dirty words. MLB officials persist in insisting the ball is not juiced, and how dare anyone suggest otherwise?

"They can say the ball is the same, but it's not," Kaat says. "Ask someone on the field. It's slicker, harder. And the seams are lower."

Mulholland agrees.

"The baseball may not be juiced in terms of exceeding major league specifications for compression," he says. "But I think the upper range of that compression limit is where the majority of balls are being manufactured."

* Teach pitchers to better defend themselves. Mets bullpen coach Al Jackson says the problem is many pitchers use "terrible" mechanics, falling off to the side rather than squaring up at the end of their deliveries.

"I remember Ken Boyer hitting a ball at me," says Jackson, a former major league pitcher and pitching coach. "If I'm not squared up, I'm dead. If I don't get my glove on the ball, I'm dead. If I'm to the side like these guys, that ball would have gone right through me.

"Fortunately, I was taught the right way. With some of these guys, it's scary how much they fall off to the side."

* Get tough on steroids, "I'm not accusing players of being on steroids, but I don't understand why pitchers don't stand up and want steroid-testing," Rangers G.M. Doug Melvin says.

"Of course, the union would never go for it. But if enough pitchers would stand up and say, `Hey, there's a distinct advantage to the hitters. We can't control the strike zone. We can't control the new ballparks. But this is something we can control.' ... maybe that is something that can help level it off.