Last weekend, a good friend of mine posed this question during our tour of Nationals Ballpark: "Why are there switch hitters but no such thing as switch pitchers?"
The both of us were suffering from acute veisalgia at the time, so at first I just smirked and continued concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other. But then it hit me, yeah, why aren't there switch pitchers? Eventually, after some painstaking thought, we settled on the fact that since accurately throwing a pitch with big-league velocity is so difficult and takes so much practice to do so with just one arm, that one person being able to do it with two arms was just too unlikely.
And then, this morning, this article was sitting in my inbox, sent from my brother [link: The Official Site of Major League Baseball: Ambidextrous Venditte creates a stir]:
Henriquez had been swinging left-handed in the on-deck circle, so Venditte switched his glove to his right hand in order to face the 21-year-old backstop. Seeing this, Henriquez instead came to the plate batting from the right side. So, Venditte switched his glove back to his left hand. Henriquez then decided to bat lefty, and Venditte switched his glove yet again.
So, no matter how clouded your judgment, never say never.
Update: By the way, Venditte uses a six-fingered glove. Somewhere, Antonio Alfonseca is slapping his six digits to his forehead exclaiming, "why didn't I think of that?!?"
