When Pitching is King

A good number of baseball fans will look on Wednesday night's 1-0 Phillies loss to Matt Cain and the San Francisco Giants as a boring game. Boring because there was no offense. Boring perhaps because the Phillies inconsistent offense once again failed to deliver. Boring because the Phils squandered a pitching gem by Cliff Lee (10 IP, 7 Hits, 0 ER, 0 BB, 7K). Boring - in fact - because they really have no appreciation for the well-pitched baseball game! In this day of small parks, the designated hitter, tightly wound baseballs that get replaced whenever they touch Mother Earth, juiced ball players (If they're still testing, they're still finding them), pitch counts, and bullpen specialists with their niche innings, you rarely get to see two starting pitchers matching each other inning-for-inning, out-for-out, pitch-by-pitch for nine complete innings. It simply does not happen that often in Major League Baseball anymore. Last night, if you were able to stay awake on the right coast ... ... In my case - dozing off and on - after a few hours of beers with friends as we watched Revenge of the Penguins ... but just for two periods ... 9-3 at the time was PLENTY ...      ... you got to see a pitching classic. Matt Cain (A much heralded Hatboro Mike fantasy baseball draft acquisition), coming off a near perfect game last week where he surrendered but one lonely hit - to another pitcher no less - in an 11 strikeout, 5-0 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates, went ONLY nine scoreless innings surrendering but 2 hits and 1 BB with 4 Ks. Not only did Cain not get the win, which was decided in the 11th; he didn't even last as long as Lee, who pitched through 10 innings. And I doubt many people realize just how rare it is for starting pitcher - or any pitcher for that matter - to go 10 complete innings.         Back in the days before specialist relief pitching, when the only juice baseball people spoke of was tobacco, you would routinely see starting pitchers go eight, nine, 10 innings. That's when you could see Sandy Koufax, Warren Spahn, Juan Marichal, and Phillie Chris Short pitching well past the ninth inning in classic pitchers' duels. In 1963, Spahn and Marichal combined for what is considered one of the best pitchers duels ever seen, a 16-inning 1-0 victory by the 25-year-old Marichal over the 42-year-old Spahn. Short went 15 innings in an 18-inning game that was called due to curfew with the score still knotted at 0-0!   These days that kind of Herculean pitching performance just isn't seen. So learn to enjoy the well-pitched game, regardless of whether it goes nine, 11, or 18 innings. They end up being the kind of games you remember for a very long time. Hatboro Mike is blogging about the Philadelphia Phillies 2012 season at The View from Section 135!