Tuesday was my last day at spring training. I'd set up an interview at Salt River Fields, but that fell through and I had a decision to make ... What to do? See if I could fly home early and reunite with my little pack? Spend the day in a coffee shop, catching up all the things I've been ignoring for nearly a week? In the end, I made the easy choice: Visit Mesa's HoHoKam Park, the only spring-training ballpark in Arizona I'd never seen.
HoHoKam's the new home of the Athletics ... which meant at least a chance that I would see Pat Venditte pitch. But I ran into Scott Miller in the press box, and he said the A's told him Venditte wasn't scheduled to pitch. But then, a few innings later: Hope! Scott had checked in with the A's pitching coach, and it seemed that Venditte might pitch after all.
And in the seventh inning, there he was, warming up in the bullpen. I hustled down from the press box to a choice seat just a few rows behind the third-base dugout, so considerately vacated by some early-departing fan.
The bottom of the seventh inning ended, Venditte trotted in from the bullpen -- his arrival trumpeted by the nine-year-old boy running loose in my row -- and at 3:42 Mountain Standard Time, I finally saw Pat Venditte throw a real pitch to a real batter.
He would, in fact, and in far too short a time, throw real pitches to four real batters:
Jake Goebbert (L)
Rymer Liriano (R)
Auston Bousfield (R)
Mike McCoy (R)
After retiring Goebbert on a pop to the second baseman, Venditte switched his glove from right hand to left hand so quickly that I missed it (for which I'll never forgive myself, but of course there's a long list of those). Liriano lined a single to left, but Venditte retired Bousfield on a looping liner to left and McCoy on a can of corn to right.
And so it ended. Bousfield's just a kid, looks like he's fresh out of the Central High School Freshman Mixer. But the other guys have all logged time in the majors, so Venditte's quick outing was a success.
If you're purely results-oriented. Which the Athletics surely are not. Frankly, Venditte didn't do anything impressive on the field, and the seven-man bullpen makes his versatility much less useful than it would have been 20 years ago.
I got to see him pitch, though. Which is another reason to fly home tomorrow. The Cactus League can only go downhill from here.
