Hit, Run and Throw

Major League baseball has this obsession with pitching. They say the game is 90 percent pitching, which makes no sense, by the way. Babe Ruth was a great pitcher. A really great pitcher. He was on his way to a Hall of Fame career. They moved him to the outfield.

However, the search for pitching continue, and now the Pirates have signed a couple of pitchers from India. These pitchers were found it a contest sponsored by a California outfit. The theory being that in a billion people, they can find a few that can hit the strike zone at 85 plus.

This is an interesting theory. I suppose they might have found Walter Johnson and Christy Matthewson but it's more likely they just found two javelin throwers who don't know anything about playing baseball. The places with the most talent for baseball do not appear to have high populations. What they have are kids who do nothing but actually play baseball. Baseball is a hard enough game that I have might doubts that you can learn to play it at a high level just because you have a strong throwing arm. Ron LeFlore was famous for never having playing organized ball until he played in a prison league, but I would imagine that he played in at least one or two games in his life.These guys threw javelin. I would imagin they played cricket. On the other hand, the Pirates saw something they liked.