Summer of '68 seems like it was a million dollars ago

By Gene Collier
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/
Sunday, July 06, 2008

From left to right, Raymond Abreu, Oakland Athletics' director of Latin America operations, Billy Beane, Oakland Athletics' Vice President and General Manager, 16-year-old pitching prospect Michael Inoa and Edgar Mercedes, pose for the photographers after signing a contract in Santo Domingo, Wednesday, July 2, 2008. The Oakland Athletics and prized Dominican Michael Inoa agreed Wednesday to a minor league contract with a $4.25 million signing bonus. (AP Photo)


In a week when the number of major league pitchers on the disabled list broke 100, settling at 101 by the holiday, the Oakland A's gave a 16-year-old Dominican right-hander $4.25 million merely to sign a contract.

I hope the actual signing by 6-foot-7, 205-pound Michael Inoa was pain free.

What do you think the A's are going to do with a 16-year-old minor leaguer with 4,250,000 of their dollars in his pocket and plenty more on the way? They're going to count every single pitch is what they're going to do. They're going to take every precaution that conceivably ensures he'll not ever come within 10 pitches of straining himself, and thus he won't come within 10 miles of building the kind of arm strength that will allow him, someday, to avoid the disabled list.

Funny game, isn't it?

From the purpose of identifying a general vantage point on this, I should point out that I'm generally not one to lament the state of big league pitching, as I think the game is better when hitting dominates pitching rather than the other way around. Some of the game's top students rhapsodize on 1-0 games, but I much prefer long Sunday slugfests that end up 9-8 in extra innings, with multipe homers, platoons of baserunners, acidic rhubarbs, at least one ejection, managers running out of players, and maybe a former stripper running onto the field to kiss the Evangelical third baseman at some point.

All that said, pitching today is so hard to watch, particularly Pirates pitching, that we could benefit from a little celebration of the 40th anniversary of 1968, the Year of the Pitcher, or as baseball Shakespearean Roger Angell so eloquently referred to it, the Year of the Pop-Up.

Forty years ago this summer, Bob ("He'll stick it in your ear!") Gibson's earned run average was on its way to 1.12, Denny McLain went 31-6, Don Drysdale pitched six consecutive shutouts in a streak of 582/3 consecutive scoreless innings (Gibson allowed two earned runs in a 99-inning stretch), and Juan Marichal went 26-9 with 30 complete games.

Naturally, the delicate dynamic between pitching and hitting is cyclical, and that's best remembered by baseball author William B. Meade's research showing that in 1930, nine teams hit .300 or better, but by 1968, only six players hit .300 or better.

In 1968, Carl Yaztrzemski won the American League batting title. He hit .301. McLain, who became the first pitcher since 1934 to win 30 games, had an ERA of 1.96, good for only fourth best in the American League (Dave McNally's was 1.95, Sudden Sam McDowell's 1.81, and Luis Tiant's 1.60). The National League won the All-Star Game 1-0, and Gibson started the World Series against McLain by punching out 17 Detroit Tigers.

When it was all over, baseball lowered the pitching mound by 33 percent, from 15 inches to 10. By 1987, when the National League won the All-Star Game, 2-0, in 13 innings, some were saying it should be lowered again, but by 2007, pitchers often needed steroids, psycho-analysis, sunflower seeds, an emery board, and a novena just to make it through five innings.

The New York Times pointed out recently that total ERA, 2.98 in 1968, is now 4.17, but beyond all of the accepted precursors of atrocious pitching (including all the financial, political, medical, and insurance-driven reasons), the basic approach to pitching has gradually changed from attack to duck-and-cover.

This column has never been a fan of Roger Clemens for numerous and oft-stated reasons, but seeing him work was a pleasure compared to watching the great majority of people poisoning mounds this summer. In his prime and beyond, Clemens threw hard fastballs to various parts of the strikezone until the opposition demonstrated that something else might be necessary. He eventually developed a splitter that he mixed in as needed, but he certainly wasn't fooling around out there.

Too many contemporary pitchers are working as though they'll be mortified if someone lines a single to center. They're afraid of the bat. Afraid of the inside part of the plate. Afraid of hurting themselves. Afraid of making a mistake. The only thing they don't appear to be afraid of is walking people.

Though this latter condition is baseball wide, the Pirates just happen to be Exhibit A. Though John Russell's accomplished offensive team made it to the weekend just a handful of games under .500, his pitchers had walked the population of a decent village, 341. Only the Rangers and Giants had walked more. In games in which the Pirates walked more hitters than the opposition pitchers, Pittsburgh was 14-29. In games when they walked fewer than the opposition, they were 26-15.

When managers say walks'll kill ya, they mean over the course of two or three hours. What's killed pitching over the past 40 years is more complicated, but the notion that a 16-year-old can get $4.25 million from a major league team more than curdles the climate for developing healthy arms.

Bob Gibson

1968: The Summer of Pitching Love

* Los Angeles' Don Drysdale's 58 1/3-inning shutout streak made the history books. But five other pitchers had streaks of 30 innings or longer.

* St. Louis' Bob Gibson, right, led the majors in ERA at 1.12 -- second-lowest since 1900.

* Cleveland's Luis Tiant struck out 19 to top a list of 13 games in which a pitcher fanned 14 or more.

* The 10 AL teams hit a combined .230, with the Yankees bringing up the rear at an anemic .214.

* Thirteen of the 20 major league teams posted earned run averages below 3.00.

* Boston's Carl Yastrzemski won the American League batting title with a .301 average.

* Only six players in all of Major League Baseball hit .300. Only two hit above .320.

* Detroit's Denny McLain won 31 games -- the most recent pitcher to win 30.

Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com.
First published on July 6, 2008 at 12:00 am