Time to change pitchers

Post date: Nov 5, 2012 2:20:06 AM

By Dante Sabatucci

One of the most difficult decisions a baseball coach has to make is when to change pitchers.  During the course of a game, there are many things that happen that are outside of the control of the pitcher.  There are errors, plays that aren't made, bad calls by umpires, bad hops and sometimes the hitters are just better.  As a coach, one of the things I ask of my pitchers is to take responsibility for their performance.  If I go out to the pitching mound to talk with the pitcher to ask him how he is doing, I don't want to hear excuses.  I don't want to hear about how the umpire made a bad call or how the other team is just lucky.  Most of all, I certainly would not want to hear that the first pitcher in the game was so bad that he cannot possibly do better especially after I brought him into the game was because he promised he could do the job.  I DO want to hear about what he is going to do that's within his control to get batters out.  If the pitcher has pitched for four innings (for example) and has not performed the way his teammates need him to, it is the responsibility of the coach to replace the pitcher for the good of the team, even if he has every excuse in the book as to why its someone else's fault.  

I have thought long and hard about whether I wanted to weigh in about the direction of our country.  As a business owner, there are going to be half of the people reading this who disagree vehemently with me and it will most like cost me business and money.  But I think of our founding fathers who risked their lives and their businesses when they proudly signed the Declaration of Independence.  As a Gulf War veteran, I proudly risked my life for this country and if I have the chance to convince just one undecided voter to vote for FREEDOM, capitalism and fiscal responsibility, it is worth the risk to me.  Ohio might be the differece in this election and as we saw in the 2000 (Florida) and 2004 (Ohio) elections, just a relatively few number of votes can make a difference.  So, after several month of thinking about whether I wanted use my newsletter to try and do everything I can for this country, I decided that this election is so importrant that it would be more risky to do nothing. 

I did not vote for Mitt Romney in the Republican primary and I did not like him at all for the past four or five years without knowing that much about him.  I kept hoping that someone else would appear to beat him because I did not think he was the right man for our country right now.  But the more I have heard him talk and the more I learn about his background, I am now convinced that he is the right man at the right time.  It occured to me recently that if there is one phrase to describe his career, it would be "turnaround specialist".  And what else does this country need right now if it isn't a turnaround specialist?  In his business career, he specialized in turning companies around.  Then, he turned the Olympics around.  Then, as Governor of Massachusetts he appears to have worked with a Democrat heavy legislature and ultimately left office with a budget surplus.  I don't pretend to know much about his tenure in Massachusetts but the most dangerous thing to our country's future is our debt and deficit.  If our economy collapses it would likely cause a worldwide economic depression which will probably affect billions of people negatively.  The world counts on our economic strength and the USA has done more for poverty and disease than any other country in history.  Are we arrogant enough to think that we cannot fall like every other great country in history?  For those that say that the reason for the debt and deficits is due to the bad economy, consider this:  we have plenty of revenue coming to the federal treasury.  We have two trillion dollars in revenues coming to the federal treasury under the current tax code which is more money than any country has ever recevied in revenues throught history.......by far.   For us to be in so much debt would be equivalent to Bill Gates spending more than he makes and being on the verge of bankruptcy.  If that happened to Gates, it would be because of a spending problem not an income problem.  The debt and the spending threatens the very FREEDOM of my children in the future.  We need a turnaround specialist who can work with both political parties.  

It's the bottom of the 9th inning and the World Series is on the line.  The bases are loaded and there are no outs and your team is up by a run.  If you were the coach, would you leave in a pitcher who constantly makes excuses as to why its not his fault or bring in a pitcher who has consistenly worked his way out of similar situations?