The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Having fun talking baseball with Denehy
Before I knew it, the phone call to Florida was still going strong more than an hour later. Time flies when you’re having this much fun talking baseball with Middletown’s very own Bill Denehy.
More than two years have passed since I last caught up with the former major league pitcher and Woodrow Wilson Wildcat known way back when as “Wild Bill.”
Today at 74, Denehy is still absorbed in the game. He and Don “Grog” Lombardo riff on the current state of baseball through their Facebook feeds.
Denehy was a big leaguer half a century ago, but he isn’t stuck to the old ways.
He is a modern thinker when it comes to baseball. He is also happily holding onto what remains of his eyesight.
“My sight is getting worse,” he said, “from the glaucoma in the one good eye, my left. I can stick my hand out in front of me three or four feet and still see my fingers, but anything past that difficult. I had a COVID test a few weeks ago and it came back negative. Other than that, I’m good.”
Denehy wears a mask on Tuesdays and Fridays, the two days he gets out of his apartment. A caregiver checks in on him, takes him to appointments and helps with shopping. Florida, meanwhile, is pushing the 600,000 mark in positive coronavirus cases as of Sunday afternoon.
“From what she (his caregiver) tells me, signs are up all over the place telling people to wear a mask,” Denehy said, “but I still see people not wearing them, all younger people, just by what she describes to me, people ages 21 to 35, that range there. I don’t know why they don’t wear a mask. It’s crazy. We’ve had this thing going on nationally, ‘should you or shouldn’t you wear a mask.’ It’s not that difficult. I don’t like wearing a mask, especially with the humidity at this time of year, but it’s a small price to pay for not catching COVID.”
As his eyes have failed him over the years, Denehy has become a keen listener of Major League Baseball games on television. Radio is not a good option for practical reasons. I can envision passing by Denehy’s door and, behind it, hearing a Yankees, Mets or Rays broadcast bouncing off the walls.
“I’m one of 24 million people in the U.S. that are blind, and people assume that because we are blind, that we can’t watch TV,” he said. “The reason that I and I’m sure a lot of other people that are blind listen on TV, is because we can switch channels. I don’t sit there and have to turn a radio dial. With TV, it’s easy. I believe in my case that listening to a game on television is very advantageous to me.”
From there, it was All Baseball with Bill.
Augeri: The Yankees have almost an entire lineup on the injured list — Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, DJ LeMahieu, Gleybar Torres and James Paxton, to name some. What’s with so many muscle injuries?
Denehy: Ballplayers are obsessive. Michael Jordan took 200 shots a day, Steph Curry 500 shots a day. The great players are obsessive. Today, with guys being at the ballpark as long as they are, they have a training schedule and do weightlifting and that’s fine, but what I have learned is when you work out weights and build out muscle, you have to stretch almost twice as much to keep the strength and to keep the elasticity. I don’t know if they do enough stretching, but they do a lot of pumping. When I hurt my arm (in the majors), my offseason weight training was with two pounds. That’s it.
If I was a general manager I would have hired Ichiro to come in and run my strength training and flexibility. Why do I say Ichiro? He played until he was 45 and spent only a small amount of time on the DL. At 45, he was still able to touch his palms to the ground, he also had a pregame routine of throwing 90 feet and he got up to 300 feet. Again, more stretching, and stretching of the arm. If you want to build up your arm strength, throw 90 to 150 to 200 to 250 and 300 feet and do it with a softball. Why? Because it’s heavier than a baseball. Not by a lot, but at the same time you are strengthening your arm. And if you do lift weights, lift less weight and do more repetitions.”
Augeri: Baseball introduced several new features for this 60-game regular season, like an expanded playoff field, seven-inning doubleheaders, starting a runner at second base in extra innings. What do you like and not like about these new wrinkles?
Denehy: Having extra innings start with a runner on second — I LOVE it. I think it brings excitement back into the game and strategy back into the game. From a defensive standpoint with a runner on second, you want to get that one out. Do you walk the next guy to set up the double play? If a runner moves up and there’s one out, do you walk the next guy to again set up the double play?
I was watching the Blue Jays play the Rays the other night. Toronto had a man on second base in either the eighth or ninth inning and the batter tried to bunt him over with two strikes and failed. They go into extras and the same guy is up again and squares around to bunt and pulls back, then fouls off the next pitch. The Rays are now guessing what he’s going to do. On the third pitch he bunts and moves the runner over. I love that type of strategy for a manager. It’s one of the biggest pluses with baseball’s changes. Plus the fact, even as a traditionalist and former player, there is nothing more boring than seeing a game go 17 or 18 innings with no scoring. I don’t want to see a clock in baseball, but this gives it some finality.
I definitely think they ought to keep the DH in baseball for both leagues. For the one or two pitchers who can hit, forget it. Put another hitter in the lineup. It makes the game more exciting.
I don’t think the change they’ve made with the relief pitching has bothered anybody. In September with the 40-man roster, teams are almost going a pitcher per hitter and that’s boring to me. Now, a reliever has to face a minimum of three batters (unless the inning ends before that) and that is a good thing. And the seven-inning doubleheaders are fine, especially as makeup games more than scheduled games.
But the thing that I’m probably more against than anything else is the defensive shift. The shift is getting ridiculous. Saturday night, the Rays had four outfielders. They took their third baseman and put him into short right field behind the first baseman so if a ball was hit down the line he can cut it off to prevent a double. I’m with Cal Ripken and Buck Showalter — there should be a rule that two infielders have to be on each side of second base with one or both feet on the dirt. There are people who say that if the shift is on, all a batter has to do is bunt. If you take your kid to a Yankee game and they see an extraordinary shift on Aaron Judge, would you want to see Aaron Judge bunt three times? The kid would say, I thought this guy was supposed to be a home run hitter! I think the shift has to be changed or done away with.
Augeri: What other beefs do you have with baseball?
Denehy: The baseballs themselves. I’m so tired of listening to the company line that the balls are all the same. Anyone who believes that also believes in the Easter Bunny. The velocity of the ball coming off the bat is 115 miles per hour for some guys. There are home runs traveling 470 feet. Major League Baseball has to go back to the ball carrying a reasonable distance. There are smaller infielders hitting opposite-field home runs and that’s a true indication as to what’s going on in baseball.
Augeri: You have long been an advocate for moving the mound back 18 inches as a safety precaution for pitchers, especially at a time when the ball is flying off bats.
Denehy: How about when teams use an infielder to mop at the end of games? He’s throwing like an infielder! He’s not winding up, he’s just throwing batting practice to get the final few outs. If he can’t come to a fielding position after throwing a pitch … pitchers are at a point where they have a millisecond to protect themselves from a ball being hit at head level.
Pitchers should wear some type of helmet (some, in fact, wear a padded hat for protection, especially those who previously have been hit by a batted ball). This is a safety issue and it should be mandatory. Back in 1971 I wore a plastic insert inside my cap when I pitched for the Tigers. The reason was because Billy Martin had me throwing at so many damn hitters, I was worried someone would coldcock me in a fight. I wore it for the wrong reason, but it wasn’t any big deal. If a major leaguer says he can’t wear it, to be honest with you that’s (baloney). If a pitcher is throwing 100 and a guy hits one back at him at 115, how do you get out of the way? You can’t.
Augeri: Much has been made about the game’s “unwritten rules” in the last couple of weeks, after the Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr. hit a grand slam on a 3-0 pitch in a lopsided game against Texas. What do you make of the criticism he received for swinging away in that situation?
Denehy: I almost think the unwritten rules keep getting written unwittingly as we go along. Back when I played, the only one I remember was if you drilled one of our good hitters, there was payback. Or if you came into second base really hard, there was payback for that. When I played, we were taught that when you faced the bases loaded and you went to a 3-0 count, it was preached, ‘Don’t let up and don’t throw a batting practice fastball. Make a good effort, make a good pitch.’ So there was no unwritten rule that you had to take a 3-0 pitch in that situation. Jim Palmer never gave up a grand slam in his career. The reason, he said, whether the count was 3-0 or 3-2, if he walked a guy it was better allowing one run to score than if he laid one down the middle and four runs came home.