Kerry Wood is still the talk of the baseball world. His 20 strikeouts, which tied Roger Clemens’ single-game record, has been dissected up and down, front and back. But it was Phil Regan who offered a different spin.
“To me the most amazing stat is not just the 20 strikeouts but no walks,” the Cubs’ pitching coach observed. “It’s hard to believe a 20-year-old kid throwing 98 to 100 m.p.h. can get that many strikeouts without giving up a walk.”
Regan, a former teammate of Sandy Koufax’s with the Los Angeles Dodgers, exhumed the box score of one of Koufax’s legendary games. “I had to look it up,” Regan explained. “It was the day Sandy had 18 strikeouts.”
And just as Regan had suspected, Koufax gave up more than one walk. “Four walks,” Regan said. “That’s more like it for a power pitcher.”
“That’s what was unusual,” agreed Ron Perranoski, a baseball lifer who is currently the San Francisco Giants’ pitching coach.
More Top Picks Best Canister Vacuums For Stairs
Perranoski was also among Koufax’s teammates and recalled Koufax spending five years struggling with his control.
“It was a long time before he could throw strikes with any consistency,” Perranoski said.
Perranoski has an excellent memory of the day in spring training when Koufax, with the help of catcher Norm Sherry, unlocked the puzzle:
“It was in ’60 or ’61. Sandy was wild as usual. Sherry called time and went to the mound. He told Sandy to relax and just throw the ball with his natural motion. He said, `Sandy, quit trying to throw the ball as hard as you can.’ “
Perranoski shook his head in amazement.
“And this kid (Wood) needed only one month in the big leagues,” he said.
Umpire Jerry Crawford, who is working the Cubs’ weekend series here against the Giants, said a pitcher, regardless of how hard he throws, can’t win without control.
“Everybody in the big leagues hits the best fastball,” Crawford insisted.
Crawford paused and corrected himself. This is his 22nd major-league season.
“Maybe not everybody. But it’s at least 80 percent, maybe 90 percent. The hitters can time the 100 m.p.h. fastball. Just ask Nolan Ryan. He could get it up to 100, but he didn’t really start winning until he controlled his curveball. The curve, not his fastball, was his out pitch.”
Crawford then asked how Wood mastered his control at such a young age. Well, maybe Wood learned from Babe Ruth.
“How could he learn from Ruth?” Crawford asked. “The kid’s father wasn’t even born when Ruth was playing.”
That’s true, but he could have read the answer out of the Babe’s instructional book.
“Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball,” ghost-written by Ford Frick, was published in 1928 when Frick was a New York sportswriter, three decades before he became the commissioner. The book described baseball, position by position.
Here’s Ruth’s advice to pitchers:
“The thing any pitcher has got to develop–the biggest single item in his whole stock and trade–is control! Don’t let anybody kid you about it. The curve and the fast one are important; the change of pace and other trick deliveries are great–but they’re not worth a plugged nickel unless you have control to go with them.
“And by control I don’t mean the ability to put the ball over the plate somewhere between the shoulders. . . . I mean the ability to hit a 3-inch target nine throws out of 10. . . . The sort of control that lets you put the ball in the exact spot you want it, and to play a corner to the split fraction of an inch.”
Wood also could learn from a 1912 article on how to pitch by 511-game winner Cy Young, baseball’s all-time winningest pitcher.
“Every boy who tries to become a pitcher should make an effort to secure control,” Young wrote. “Speed is decidedly a bad qualification for pitching unless accuracy goes with it. Speed that results in bases on balls is the equivalent of base hits, and to permit hits to be made is the first step to defeat.
“To obtain control, which is so essential to success, there is nothing like practice. Young players will be astonished to see how practice will assist their efficiency. Merely get the ball to the plate with sufficient force to cause it to come within the batter’s reach. The next thing is to master the curve.”