Looking Back to the Day Pat Venditte Altered MLB History with Both Hands

It was on this date five years ago that Pat Venditte made his big league debut with the Oakland Athletics. He was the first competely ambidextrous MLB pitcher, and baseball had to make changes to accomodate his skills.

Pat Venditte doesn’t think he’s particularly slow, but what can you say about a pitcher who saw both his parents and his in-laws beat him to the ballpark for his Major League debut?

It was on this day five years ago that Venditte became the first pitcher to throw both left-handed and right-handed, pitching in a Friday evening game in Fenway Park for the A’s against the Red Sox.

It was just another day in a seven-plus-year minor league career on June 4, 2015 for Venditte, who was pitching for Triple-A’s Nashville team. It was his first season in the A’s organization after seven seasons with the Yankees, during which time he seemed destined to spend his career in the minors.

And he was slow, with a fastball that only reached about 85 mph. The thing was, he could throw it with either hand. Nobody else could say that. And when Sounds manager Steve Scarsone called Venditte into his office that evening, he completely caught Venditte by surprise, telling him that he was no longer a minor leaguer. He was going to meet the A’s in Boston.

He called his family; they told him they’d see him in Fenway Park. They were so excited, they were among the first people in the stands that Friday. Venditte himself, caught up by weather troubles flying out of Nashville at 7 a.m., was so late that he had to enter the stadium with late-arriving patrons in the second inning because the player/media/staff entrance was long-since closed.

He got dressed, headed to the dugout, then walked, slowly walked, to the bullpen. He was following what he considered great advice from catcher Stephen Vogt. Vogt had been deep into his sixth minor league season when he got called up for the first time, so he had an idea what Venditte was going through.

“I’ll never forget Stephen Vogt pulling me aside right when I came into the dugout, because he’d kind of been through what I’d been through with a lot of years in the minors,” Venditte said. “He said `I don’t want you to just run out to the bullpen. I want you to walk as slow as you possibly can from the dugout. Look around. Take this all in and jog as slow as you can out to the bullpen and savor every moment of it.’”

So, yes, Venditte, was perhaps the slowest man in the stadium that night.

“That was pretty cool, what Vogt said,” Venditte said. “It was the best advice I could have gotten.”

Venditte would go on to pitch two innings, the seventh and eighth, that night, making history all the while. Major League umpires, who’d never had to deal with what is now called “the Venditte rule” on the rules for pitchers who alternate throwing from the right side and the left side. The crew, with Clint Fagan behind the plate, had every opportunity make a mistake. They didn’t.

You know who did? Venditte. He faced six batters, gave up one single to Hanley Ramirez and had the base runner erased by a double play.

The last out was a strikeout of switch-hitting catcher Blake Swihart, at that point a rookie himself. Swihart and Venditte had faced each other a bunch in the minor leagues and, “I had always thrown left-handed against him.”

So, he set up as if he was going to do that again.

“I forgot that BoMel (manager Bob Melvin) told me he wanted Swihart to bat left-handed,” Venditte said. So, after setting up to throw left-handed, he had to explain to Fagan that he wasn’t trying to mess with anybody, but that his manager wanted Swihart to be a lefty, so Venditte had to throw right-handed.

“I was just so wrapped up in the moment, and the competition part of things,” Venditte said. “I got it cleaned up, though. But I’m pretty sure (Fagan) had never heard that excuse before, that I forgot I needed to pitch with the other hand. It was pretty embarrassing, but it turned out OK.”

Venditte’s stint in the big leagues lasted about a week. After getting into four games, he was sent down and didn’t come back until mid-August.

After the season was over, he was claimed on waivers by the Blue Jays. Toronto would trade him to Seattle that August. He’d spend 2017 in the Phillies’ minor league system. For 2018, he was up and down with the Dodgers. Last year, it was the same story with the Giants, getting just two big league games.

Right now, he’s with the Marlins, and the fact that baseball is probably going to a 30-man roster, there may be well be room for the man who can throw with either hand, that rare man who has a baseball rule, “the Venditte rule,” that explains how ambidextrous pitchers can be used, named after him.

That’s assuming there will be a season, post-pandemic.

“I am very hopeful and optimistic that both sides will come to an agreement,” Venditte said of the negotiations between MLB owners and players. “I hope that we’re playing baseball, not just for the game itself, but for people around the country. I think people would find that it would be nice to have something else to do.

“I’d like to pitch, sure. But I think people around the country to have the diversion that baseball can be. We know that we can help get people back together. Baseball absolutely could be one of those unifiers.”

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

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