Uncle Scoopy's Fun House

Letter from the bullpen:

Scoopy ... A question came to mind the other day that might be interesting to your readers. There have been plenty of switch hitters in baseball history. Have there ever been switch pitchers - able to throw effectively with both arms? If so, is it legal in baseball to pitch with a different arm based on the batters being faced in one inning?

Yeah, it's legal. One guy did it in the majors in 20th century, a reliever named Greg Harris, pitching for the Expos against the Reds on September 28, 1995. He wore a special glove with two thumbs. In the ninth inning of that game he faced two batters wile pitching lefty, and two more while pitching right-handed. He allowed no hits and one walk.

When I was a kid the Indians had a pretty decent right-handed starter named Cal McLish who was a switch hitter and was reputed to be an effective switch pitcher as well. We always hoped he would prove it, but he never did.

Some guys did this back in the 1880s and 90s, but remember that pitchers had a completely different delivery in those days, and it's difficult to compare the game they played to the modern game. Here's a good article on the history of switch pitching.

The rules may have to be clarified soon. There is a switch pitcher in the minors now who may have major league potential. You may have read about an odd incident in the NYP league last year. The switch-pitcher, Pat Venditte, faced a switch hitter, Ralph Henriquez. The two men engaged in a chess match where they kept shifting their positions. Henriquez would line up either left- or right-handed, Venditte would subsequently choose to pitch with the same hand, whereupon Henriquez would then go to the other side of the plate to regain the advantage, and Venditte would switch again, and so forth. After this had happened several times the teams appealed to the umpiring crew, which ruled that the batter must first select from which side of the plate he intended to hit, and that the pitcher would then be allowed to declare with which arm he would pitch. Venditte subsequently struck Henriquez out. The following is a YouTube video of that incident.