SAN DIEGO _ If the men who are paid big money to wallop baseballs know what pitch is coming, the pitchers who face them become like ducks in a shooting gallery.
So says Merv Rettenmund, a San Diegan who spent parts of five decades in pro ball and was hitting coach of the second Padres World Series team.
Rettenmund, 76, is among the longtime baseball men who applauds MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred's crackdown on the sign-stealing Houston Astros.
Rettenmund said we all should exhale, in light of this fact:
No Astros opponent was sent to the hospital by a Astros hitter who teed off on a pitch he knew was coming.
"They're lucky, just lucky," Rettenmund said. "No one got hurt."
Imagine the consequences, he added, beyond an injury, once it was established the Astros were using in-game video feeds to cheat.
"That's a lawsuit. A big one," Rettenmund said.
In light of the juiced baseballs that MLB supplies in comparison to other eras, wooden bats coated with hardening substances and the max-out power-approach of modern sluggers (some of them likely juiced), Rettenmund said even MLB infielders were imperiled by the Astros' video-enhanced cheating.
He shuddered at what might have been, grateful that MLB hitters' ballistic launches often clear low-level humans.
"When McGwire hit balls, they looked like Titleists," said the former hitting coach, who went to the 1989 and 1990 World Series with the notorious Oakland "Bash Brothers" Athletics and as Padres hitting coach between 1991-99 had a close look at the tee shots off the bats of sluggers McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds and Ken Caminiti.
Rettenmund played pro baseball between 1965-80.
As a rookie outfielder with the 1969 Baltimore Orioles, a World Series team, he learned first-hand how intel on pitches could make a world of difference.
Between their starts, Orioles starting pitchers threw batting practice to teammates.
The pitchers held back their best stuff, but used all of their pitches.
"Every day in BP, you'd face a good pitcher _ pretty good stuff, breaking balls," Rettenmund said. "It was legit."
An Orioles hitter didn't know what type of pitch was coming, but if he asked the Orioles pitcher to tip him off, he would.
But he would put a protective screen in place before serving his first known pitch.
"Because," said Rettenmund, "you could hit that ball hard that you're not supposed to hit."
His main point: If big leaguers know what type of pitch is coming, "they'll center up balls they shouldn't hit."
It pays to sell out for power in today's baseball. Ditto, recent decades.
There's generational-wealth money to be made for hitting a decent number of home runs. Strikeouts, which have risen in MLB each of the past 14 years _ and have outnumbered singles the past two years _ are tolerable.
By and large, the slap hitters are weeded out. I don't know if that's made the game more dangerous, but it may make intel more important.
A home run is the best way to defeat the increasingly sophisticated defensive shifts and pitch plans that have arisen, not to mention the high-octane bullpens.
Long ago Rettenmund went to consecutive World Series with the Orioles, and later played for Cincinnati's "Big Red Machine" team that won the 1975 World Series. Managing those teams were a pair of hardened future Hall of Famers, Earl Weaver and Sparky Anderson, respectively.
By 1979, Rettenmund was training with the California Angels, who that year would give the franchise its first AL West title. The team's best player, Don Baylor, the American League MVP that year, stood close to home plate. Plunkings were his cost of doing business. His hit-batsman total led MLB in eight seasons.
Angels manager Jim Fregosi was not unlike several managers of that era and previous eras in this regard: Responding to opponents who stole his team's pitch signals, he ordered retaliatory measures.
Rettenmund, recounting a withering episode in spring training, said Fregosi maintained his no-tolerance policy, even when the opponents were collegians.
During an exhibition game in which an Angels pitcher gave up several hard hits, it was determined by other Angels pitchers the "college kids" had stolen pitch signs.
Word reached Fregosi, a former All-Star shortstop with piercing blue eyes and a gruff manner.
He had a quiet word with his catcher.
"If they get a man on, I want you to call a first-pitch curve ball in the dirt," Fregosi said, per Rettenmund.
"Second pitch," Fregosi said, "I want you to call a curve ball in the dirt and hit the batter in the head."
Old Testament baseball, this was. Eye for an eye.
The logic: A hitter who through sign-stealing knows what's coming is endangering the pitcher, outside the bounds of baseball.
The Angels battery carried out Fregosi's edict, bringing not a second-pitch curveball away but a fastball, inside and high.
The collegians received a scary lesson in Old School ball.
"Most of the times when you'd throw a ball at the head, you don't hit him," said Rettenmund, describing that era, and earlier ones. "But, he hit him in the helmet."
The former hitter and hitting coach's explainer for that outcome:
"Because he was looking for the ... ?"
That's right. The curveball.
