Delivering a pep talk of sorts Tuesday to the assembled Pacific Coast League and International League All-Stars (some of whom were almost old enough to know who they were listening to), Hall Of Famer Tom Seaver bemoaned today’s ballplayers’ lack of appreciation for the game’s history (“what about Walter Johnson? Ruth? Cobb? I knew all that stuff,”). Quoted by Buffalo Business First’s James Fink, Seaver claims he can’t watch contemporary baseball on the TV, and that’s lucky, because you never know what kind of drunken slobs they allow on television these days.
Seaver is not a fan of average in-season games stretching beyond three hours, something he feels hurts baseball in landing new fans.
“They slowed everything down, all this fixing of the gloves and stuff,” he said.
Nor is Seaver a fan of self-imposed pitching limits where many starters barely go beyond the fifth inning or the 100-pitch mark.
“It’s all financial,” Seaver said. “(Team owners) don’t want them hurt.”
Seaver said during his days, pitchers had pitch counts but it came from within. Their fellow pitchers helped them keep count.
“Did we have pitch counts?” Seaver said. “You bet your ass we did, but it didn’t come from some computer somewhere. It was Koozy (fellow Mets pitcher Jerry Koosman) telling me I was near 112 pitches or whatever. I knew not to spend eight pitches on some team’s number eight pitcher.”
(h/t Repoz, Baseball Think Factory)