On a hazy spring afternoon in Nashville, pitcher Pat Venditte bounds up the dugout steps as pre-game music fills the Sounds’ new ballpark. The 29-year-old takes the field wearing a gray t-shirt, black shorts and a strange-looking glove.
“If I have it on this hand as a lefty, this side of the glove is where the pocket is, and vice-versa over here,” Venditte says, flipping around the six-fingered glove, which has thumb slots on each end.
“It’s a little bigger than your average glove with that extra finger in there. It looks a little funny, but it’s all I’ve used since I was 7 years old, so for me, it’s just a regular old glove.”
When Venditte was just 3, his father began teaching him how to throw with both arms. A few years later, Venditte’s dad traced the shape of his son’s hand and sent it off to Japan. It was his first custom glove.
He kept pitching that way through high school, college and even into the pros, where his unique talent made him the center of attention.
A Small Fraternity
Being ambidextrous in baseball is not uncommon. Nearly every major league team has at least one switch hitter. But pitching with both arms? There has only been one player before who’s done that: Greg Harris.
The date is etched in Harris’s memory. It was September 28, 1995.
“That was the day I threw left-handed, right-handed in Montreal against Cincinnati,” Harris says from his home in California.
No pitcher in the modern era had thrown with both arms in a big league game. But it was just one inning at the very end of Harris’s career.
Venditte, on the other hand, wants to become the first full-time switch pitcher.
“He’s proving that it’s not a joke, not a gimmick,” says Harris. “It’s something that is absolutely great for him and great for the game.”
Harris and Venditte have started a sort of ambidextrous fraternity. They now exchange texts and the occasional phone call.
‘One In A Million’
So, what’s the big deal? It’s all based on the concept that a ball breaking toward you is easier to hit than a ball that’s tailing away. Having a guy in the bullpen who can just change arms turns out to be big benefit.
“You don’t have to worry matchups, so we just bring him into the game and he’s ready to rock and roll,” says Don Schulze, the Sounds’ pitching coach.
As players warm up on the diamond, he explains why Venditte is special. “I mean, he’s one in a million.”
Still, major league teams don’t often stray from what’s familiar. So while in college at Creighton, Venditte didn’t get much attention from scouts.
“It’s very difficult to break into pro ball with one arm,” he says, “and to do it with both arms, you have to go out there and have a lot of things go your way to prove you can do it at each level.”
Even without an overpowering fastball, he joined a Yankees’ farm team, where his first contribution to the pros was actually a change to the rule book.
It came after a standoff with a switch-hitter, who kept hopping back and forth between batters boxes. The encounter confused the umpires and caused a lengthy delay as they sorted things out. Later, the “Venditte Rule” was born, making the pitcher declare first which arm he plans to use.
That was seven years ago.
One Last Hurdle
Hundreds of bus rides later, Venditte is still trying to claw his way to the majors.
In 2012, surgery on his right arm threatened to derail his career. He momentarily considered becoming a full-time lefty.
“I went in and met with the Yankees pitching coordinator at the time, and he told me that it would best for my career if I had the surgery and made the comeback as a switch pitcher,” he says.
Venditte never made it higher than Triple-A with the Yankees. This year, he finds himself the Oakland Athletics’ organization, which, as the book Moneyball showed us, has a penchant for independent thinking.
But so far, the switch pitcher in the Nashville bullpen is still waiting to be called up.
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