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Unfinished Blog Post: Pitchers are apparently born dumb

By Dex Updated

I start and stop lots of blog posts before you see the magic that appears on the screen before you. I get these ideas and then I abandon them for no apparent reason, or I'll have a draft saved somewhere and then I'll never finish it. Here's one that I could've sworn that I finished, but I found left unpublished, alone and helpless in cyberspace.

The gist of it was that there were a couple of news articles that came out when Bud Black was first hired about pitchers being dumb by virtue of the fact that few pitchers had gone on to successful careers as managers of baseball clubs.

Catchers on the other hand rule the roost. Catchers are smart and become great managers. Pitchers that are smart and become great managers are few and far between, Tommy Lasorda being notable as one of the successful ones.

I had planned on going through different works of baseball fiction to try to figure out who the "dumb" one was.

The list I had in my mind back in 2007:

  1. Roy Hobbs from the Natural - Dumb and naive as a pitcher. Wiser as a hitter. Does something dumb shortly after throwing a pitch in practice.
  2. Nuke LaLoosh from Bull Durham - Dumb as a rock. His catcher? Super-ass wise.
  3. Kit Keller from A League of Her Own - Oh sweet Kit. Not as hot/smart/talented/wise as her older sister Dottie who also happens to play catcher and basically run the Rockford Pitchers while Jimmy Dugan was snorting coke in the men's room. Incidentally, the other starter for the peaches was Ellen Sue Gotlander who was a former Miss Georgia. Just saying.
  4. Henry Wiggen from the Mark Harris novels (notably Bang the Drum Slowly) - Sure. He's an author and seems bright enough, but who truly learns from who when catcher Bruce Pearson is diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease? Who learns from who?
  5. Billy Chapel from For Love of the Game -  I was planning vaguely saying something about Clear the Mechanism, but I'm not sure what. Isn't it weird that Sam Raimi directed that movie? Sam Raimi did Evil Dead.
  6. Kenny DeNunez from the Sandlot - I have no idea where I could've gone with that one.
  7. Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn from Major League franchise - That one's a gimme.

And so on and so on.

I give it to you now in all its glory, after the jump. Fair warning, there's not a whole lot there and I probably should've just made the list off the top of my head and pushed publish back in 2007. But this is what happens. Enjoy!

Two stories about pitchers being the dumb today and then mentioning Bud Black. There's something subversive going on here. Here's a quote from Lasorda, who was a former pitcher (via Rocky Mountain News):

"I said, 'Don't let the pitchers down,' " Lasorda said. " 'Do well and do a great job of representing us pitchers.' He called to thank me and said, 'I'll do my best.' I said, 'I know you will. But just remember one thing. If you do well, then they'll think about other pitchers becoming managers.' "

And then another article.

"I don't know how it works," said Padres future Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux. "A pitcher shakes off a catcher's signs 20 times a game. Ten years later, the catcher's a manager and you're not. Figure that one out."

I'll be honest when I say that I never really thought about it, but I guess pitchers really are dumb. Idiots... The lot of them.

The Natural:

Roy Hobbs starts his career as a ridiculously good pitcher. What does he do? Right after going and accepting the first contract offer on his doorstep he knocks up his next door neighbor. He then shamelessly flirts with some spooky looking chick with mental issues and gets himself shot.

You notice how after he comes back and becomes the greatest hitter ever, he's no longer a dummy? He's been wizened. That's because he's not a pitcher anymore and pitchers are idiots. Right after he pitches batting practice in the movie is when he starts doing really stupid things again.

Bull Durham:

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