- [Ryan] Baseball is old.
It's older than dirt.
- [Will] Right.
- [Ryan] It's really old and you would think
that in that time, they would've ironed out all the wrinkles
in the rule book a little bit better.
- [Will] I think they've done a pretty good job.
- [Ryan] You do?
You think so?
- [Will] Yeah, they've gotten to a point you can play it,
watch it, or sleep through it.
- [Ryan] Sure, I guess those are good bench markers.
- [Will] Three for three.
- [Ryan] What if I told you that
despite being around for so long,
there are still changes being made to the rule book.
One in particular being made by a player, so historic,
that he did something that had not been done
in over 100 years and got his own rule in the rule book?
And that mans name is Pat Venditte.
- Never heard of him.
- Yeah, neither had I until very recently.
But it's true because he did do something
that had not been done in over 100 years
and now he's got the Pat Venditte rule in the MLB rule book.
What he did was just be born ambidextrous.
He was an ambidextrous pitcher,
which makes him a switch pitcher.
So, he could switch between being a righty or a lefty.
- Okay, so, things could get weird.
- Right.
(deep voice saying "oh yeah")
Particularly if you were facing a switch hitter
because now there's two choices to be made.
Who goes first?
Who picks first?
- Yeah.
- Who gets the benefit?
And this came to be in the middle of the game once.
So you can actually see the umpires
and the officiating crew, try and figure out a rule
for baseball in real time.
- For once, it's nice that yeah,
it would've been unnecessary for them to spell this out
before seeing it actually happen.
- Right.
- Just because the odds of this happening must be astronomical.
- Yeah, and they didn't have to worry about it until 2008.
He was playing for the Staten Island Yankees
in the minor leagues against the Brooklyn Cyclones
and switch hitter, Ralph Henriquez, comes up to the plate
and now, there's a little bit of decision making happening
because Henriquez has just seen Pat Venditte warm up
with his left hand.
But when he gets to the mound,
he has his glove on his left hand
and he's getting ready to pitch with his right hand.
So, Ralph switches to the other batter spots.
- [Will] Okay.
- [Ryan] So, then, Pat Venditte goes,
'I'll just pitch with my other hand now.'
- [Will] Screw that.
- [Ryan] So, he takes off his glove
and he switches to the other hand,
at which point Ralph goes, 'well I'm just going to switch
to the other batters box now.'
And this happens back and forth
for a significant amount of time,
before the game comes to an absolute screeching halt
and the umpire spends, no joke, six minutes,
six solid minutes, on the field trying
to figure out how to deal with this situation
that Pat Venditte's very specific physiology
has introduced into this game.
- Wait, so was this the start of an inning
so they they could just kind of like mess around?
- This ended up being the final at bat of the game.
The Brooklyn Cyclones were behind by five runs
and they had two outs already.
- Very meaningful.
- Very meaningful, yes.
Put an asterisk on this game big time.
Uh, no.
It meant nothing.
It was just a bunch of dudes having a pissing match
over a very specific rule that had not yet been written.
And as a matter of fact, major league baseball
watched this happen and said, 'we need to get a rule
in the books as soon as possible-
- Oh boy.
- So that this never happens again.'
- [Will] Sir, something is happening in Brooklyn right now.
You need to see this.
- So, MLB puts a rule on the books
and they ended up not needing it for another seven years,
which is how long it took Pat Venditte to get called up.
- Oh, okay.
- And then he did pitch his MLB debut in 2015.
- Wait, so what was the actual rule that they decided?
- The rule they landed on basically let's
the pitcher decide what hand he wants to throw with
when he gets the mound.
The actual text is: a pitcher must indicate visually
to the umpire-in-chief, the batter
and any runners the hand with which he intends to pitch,
which may be done by wearing his glove on the other hand
while touching the pitcher's plate.
- Okay.
- So, you walk up, you pick what hand you want to pitch with
and then the batter decides what box he's going to stand in
and then you just do that at bat, locked in.
- Okay, so and that's per at bat-
- Right, so he can switch in between batters
if he wants to, but as soon as he goes up to
the pitcher's plate, with that ball in his hand,
he's got to pitch with that hand
for the rest of the appearance.
- That's pretty cool.
- I think it's cool that your weird physiology
it literally changes the rules of a game.
- I don't know, being ambidextrous, whatever.
You can train for that.
- You're not impressed by that?
- Not really.
I mean, cause you can train to be ambidextrous.
- I don't think you can.
- You totally can.
- I don't think it's a ten thousand hours thing
where you just-
- You totally can.
I think you'll still have a dominant hand,
but you can, if you're really good at throwing
with your right hand, and from an early age you start
also throwing with your left, you can get there.
- But then to also become a professional baseball pitcher?
- Well that's, yeah.
I mean, there's luck involved, or whatever.
- Yeah.
- “Work”, you work real hard at it.
- Yeah.
- But yeah, you can train yourself to be righty and lefty.
- I think it would be fun if you could figure out a way
to use this strategic advantage in the middle of a pitch
and have some sort of neutral-
- Like a universal windup.
- Yeah, like a neutral windup that you pull the ball
over your head, with both hands
just directly over your head.
As you're pitching, you choose what arm
you're going to pitch with and then just
follow through with that arm.
So, what you're doing is, you do this
and then pitch it with the right.
- In the right hand.
- And you wind up again and pitch it with the left hand.
- That looks good.
That assumes that the batter is also waiting to pick
which side he's going to swing to and from.
- Yes.
- [Will] He's just like, standing on home plate-
- [Ryan] Just staring it down-
- [Will] Waiting, waiting-
- [Ryan] Like he's holding a samurai sword or something.
- Going to the left.
- I also picture some sort of, maybe he jukes.
Maybe, if the pitcher can choose mid pitch,
then the batter should also get to choose mid pitch
if he wants to scoot over to the other box or not.
- The mound has also been backed up by another 100 feet
to give the batter more time to decide-
- Yes, I agree. - Which side to switch.
- I agree. - That's only fair.
- This is what baseball is going to look like 60 years.
- Terrible.
- Just really bad.
- It's really bad.
- Worse than now.
- Love it.
- Oof.
- Weird.
- Rules.
- [Speaker] Wow, thanks a lot boys.
What an interesting rule.
Let's check in with these fellas
in this episode of Weird Rules where they talk about
how the NFL also encountered a problem
they should've seen coming from a mile away.
And if you can't get enough of these two handsome gentlemen,
don't forget to like and subscribe to SBNATION
and watch more videos here.