Pitch counts

I was listening to sports talk radio yesterday. Look, I know that this is a Jerry Springer-like time waster but I was in the car and I am a bit sick of some of the tunes that I got going right now so it beats silence (which come to think of it with 2 young boys is not really a bad thing).

Anyway, the host was discussing Mark Fidrych's arm problems and why this came about so suddenly in his career. Every caller seemed to "know" the reason. Nobody speculated. They "knew". One guy said (and I have heard this one many times) that he injured himself stepping on a sprinkler head while shagging fly balls before a game. One guy said he hurt himself while climbing a fence (?!) while exiting the bullpen. (As an aside, I don't recall any fences near the bullpens at Tiger Stadium but cannot speak to the opponent's ball parks. I can see Fidrych climbing a fence but I don't know that there would have been one around to give him the opportunity). One guy said he got in a bar fight.

I see that Fidrych pitched 250 innings in his rookie year and did not even pitch his first game until May 15th. He pitched 24 complete games some of which went into extra innings. While nobody kept track of pitch counts back then, through box scores and partial game clips, some have estimated that there were several games where he threw between 150 and 175 pitches. It is also noted that, unlike today, there was no thought of shutting him down late in the year when the Tigers were out of contention.

I think I know why he got hurt. The next time you hear an old codger complain that modern day pitchers are babied with pitch counts, think of Mark Fidrych's shredded arm.