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Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy has retired from the Dayton Daily News after covering the Cincinnati Reds for 37 years. Hal's blog, though, will continue to be a must-read for Reds fans. He'll share his thoughts on the team this season and will file updates from Great American Ball Park. You also can catch Hal in print every Sunday in his popular Ask Hal columnHome > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2009 > April > 19
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Owings: the man who swings the bat
I’m thinking the same thing all of you are thinking, especially with the Reds hitting .210 as a team.
Micah Owings. Can you play left field? Every day?
After his game-winning pinch-hit two-run double off the screen in left center field in the seventh inning Sunday during a 4-2 win over the Houston Astros, I thought to myself, “Shouldn’t this guy be a position player rather than a pitcher?”
His career batting average is .322 with 12 doubles and five home runs in only 121 majhor-league at-bats. He is a pitcher first, a pinch-hitter second. He hit .354 in the minors in 65 at-bats.
Get this: as a senior at Gainesville (Ga.) high school, he led the team to the state championship, going 12-1 with a 1.03 ERA - AND he hit .448 with 25 homers. Yikes. His 69 home runs in high school was one short of the national high school record.
But…
Remember a guy named George Herman Babe Ruth? He was an outstanding pitcher for the Boston Red Sox - great numbers. He also could hit a little bit, so he was turned into an outfielder.
And if memory serves correctly, he did pretty good with the bat, didn’t he?
Owings is nowhere close to The Babe as a pitcher - a 14-18 career record with an ERA over 5.00.
Anyway, after Owings’ game-winning double Sunday, I approached him said, “Have you ever thought about…?”
That’s as far as I got. He knew where I was going with the question and he smiled and said, “Don’t even go there, Hal. I’m a pitcher. I know what you’re thinking. I’m working on getting ready to pitch Tuesday (in Chicago). I worked hard and I think I’ve made a lot of strides since what happened the other night.”
He pitched in Milwaukee Wednesday and gave up four runs and five hits in five innings of a 9-3 loss to the Brewers. “It’s a long season and all I’m doing is focusing on each outing on the mound and each pitch.”
And the pinch-hitting is a bonus. Like most good pinch-hitters, Owings goes to the plate thinking the pitcher wants to get quickly ahead in the count, so a first-pitch fastball strike is likely. Right?
“That’s right,” said Owings. “When I was in Arizona I liked to pick some of the pitchers’ brains about how they attack pinch-hitters and I talked to Tony Clark (former deluxe pinch-hitter) and he gave me some advice that helped out. I don’t want to share it. But i’m grateful for the advice he gave me. And don’t go ask him about it?”
Clark is now a coach for the Houston Astros.
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