Pat Venditte of the San Francisco Giants on February 21 2019 in Scottsdale.

The Giants have broken the mold in pitchers with the signing of Pat Venditte who is a SHP and the only ambidextrous pitcher in the game today.

Since he is unique in MLB I was surprised that I hadn’t heard of him before now considering he was with the Oakland A’s in 2015. He’s been around since then playing for the Blue Jays, Mariners and Dodgers since. Basically 4 years 4 teams and I’m hoping that this is not another short term relationship as I feel he will at least add something unique to the team.

Pat appears to have been trained in the art of pitching as part of a mind control experiment performed on him by his father.
At a very young age Pat began to be the subject of this experiment apparently “dreamed up” by his father-to try to create an ambidextrous pitcher.

“It’s something that was forced,” said Venditte. “I can’t do anything else left-handed. I can’t eat. I can’t write. I can’t even throw a football left-handed.”

Personally I am surprised that he has strong control with both arms as I myself am ambidextrous and I can’t even hold a fork or a pen properly with my right hand while I play all sports right handed. Because of my experience I wonder if he does indeed have two equally strong pitching arms.

Doing nothing spectacular lately he seems to be a favorite with fellow players due to the unique glove he uses. Sporting two thumbs his mitt can be used on either and or both hands. Not at the same time so far but Pat says he’s working on some new “over the top” pitches so…

I think he should live dangerously on the mound trying all the new fangled pitches he has created for his debut in Orange & Black. Sadly he may not be around for long since his delivery is mainly side armed and we all know that a pitcher has a shorter career life span if he’s pron to contorting his body like that. Although it is more fun to watch. Actually any kind of erratic behavior on the mound has always be a favorite addition to a game in my opinion. There will never be another Denise Ekersly.

The man’s so unique they named a rule after him. “The Venditte Rule” requires an
ambidextrous pitcher to declare which arm he will use before an at-bat starts.

The San Francisco Giants have had some noteworthy players in the past- some for their abilities on the field -some for their unique characters- but to quote
Al Saracevic
“they haven’t had a switch-handed pitcher.”

Credits to:
Al Saracevic is the sports editor of The San Francisco Chronicle. Email:
asaracevic@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @alsaracevic