Baseball

[Talvenada]

Does anybody remember a pitcher from 10-20 years ago who was ambidextrous? He might have pitched in the 70's even.

He was right-handed but he did throw left-handed in MLB games. He played for The Phillies, and I think The Padres and Mets. He was told not to do it anymore by one of the teams he was on. He was a player on the bubble of the teams he played for, and he was okay at best. He only threw lefty to a few batters before being stopped. He wasn't clobbered when he did it, but it was only a few batters.

[smc]

There was a major league pitcher in the mid-1990s named Greg Harris who was ambidextruous. He threw one inning of shutout ball for the Expos in 1995, against the Reds, facing four hitters: two as a lefty (walking one), and two as a righty). Before that, Harris had been up and down between the minors and the majors for the Mets, Reds, Expos, and Padres, beginning with his 1981 MLB debut. In 1985-88, he pitched for the Rangers and Phillies, and was claimed off waivers by the Red Sox after Philadelphia let him go. He was nothing to write home about for the Sox, sometimes in the rotation and sometimes in the bullpen. The Sox released him mid-season 1994, he was with the Yankees for a bit, and then tried his luck with the Expos in 1995, retiring at the end of that year.

I remember that in Boston he was expressly forbidden to pitch with both hands. Lou Gorman, then the GM for the Sox, said it would be a "mockery" of baseball." It wasn't until his Expo stint that he got to "mock" major league baseball like that!

[Talvenada]

Thnx, SMC.


That's the guy I was thinking of. I didn't realize it was so recent, so to speak.



TAL