When Pitchers Were Men and Stuff

Like any good blogger, Murray Chass is often angry about things — angry enough to bang Internet spoon on bloggy highchair. His latest bete noir, of which there are multitudes, is the imagined whippersnapper who’s responsible for the mollycoddling of today’s stick-and-ball bowlers. Grrr:

Pitchers have never had so many friends – in baseball itself and on the periphery of baseball. People keep coming up with excuses for pitchers and more crutches for them than for a legion of Tiny Tims.

Along with excuses, people keep lowering the standards for pitchers. People in my once proud profession are probably mostly to blame because the younger generation of baseball writers have led the rush to the dark side, believing their new view of statistics is more significant than the view of the older writers that has prevailed for as long as baseball has been played.

This, of course, is a common refrain. I’m not particularly interested in pitch-count arguments, but I am interested in bizarre physical extremes. So to make Mr. Chass and his band of renown feel a bit better, let’s think back to a time when pitchers truly were men among sniveling, rat-faced cowards like me. Consider this 1942 tale of brawn, flinty resolve and limestone testicles:

At Korakuen Stadium in Tokyo‚ one of the most memorable games in Japanese League history takes place‚ a 28-inning marathon (4-4 tie) between Nagoya and Taiyo. It takes three hours and 47 minutes and both starters‚ Michio Nishizawa of Nagoya and Jiro Noguchi of Taiyo‚ go all the way: Nishizawa 311 pitches; Noguchi 344. Games are not allowed to end in a tie because the league has to show off their fighting spirit‚ according to historian Yoichi Nagata. Because this is the last day of the spring schedule in the three-part season (spring‚ summer and fall)‚ closing ceremonies and awards are scheduled‚ so officials order the umpire to end the game. Nagoya uses only 9 players‚ and Taiyo‚ 10. Despite the war‚ the game is noted in TSN.

You know what real men do besides brawl in churches and use Valvoline to deep-fry falcon meat? They throw 344 mothertrucking pitches in a game.

Once, in a Diamond Mind league, I stretched out Scott Erickson to 260 pitches in order to allow my crippled bullpen to fight another day. And even though it was fake and on a computer and all that stuff (but we totally had girlfriends, so shut up), the notion of ritually abusing a fake computer pitcher to such an extent still struck my competitors as crazy. But 344 pitches in a single game of real-life, board-certified baseball? That’s crazy — as crazy as a gorilla with rabies, which, I am confident, is a thing that would be quite crazy.

My point in all of this? Murray Chass is a blogger.