I hate the Internet sometimes.
So I clicked on the link and went to the Baseball America story for this guy. Watched the video, and saw the note about how it was the fastest pitch ever thrown by a Japanese pitcher in a Nippon baseball game. It noted that it tied a club record set by a guy named Marc Kroon- and that peaked my curiosity. Who was this guy who threw 101 mph in the Japanese league, and why was he there? So I looked him up on Baseball-Reference. Pretty non-descript guy, drafted in 1991 and had a total of 26 bigleague innings over 4 years between 95-98 in various callups. Had bigtime control issues but stuck around because he threw so hard apparently and was stuck in the minors after that. In 2005 he said 'f it' and went to Japan where he became a dominant closer, apparently just throwing the ball down the middle of the plate since they couldn't hit it. He gave the states one last shot at age 38 in 2011, but got beat up in the PCL and called it a career.
But that isn't what caught me. I noticed on his baseball-reference page that he has a Twitter. So I clicked on it. Not too many tweets, but I did see a tweet about the passing of Tony Gwynn, that linked to a photo on Instagram:
http://instagram.com/p/pUvfmWpFo9/
He recounts a story about facing Tony Gwynn right after being traded to the Reds. It was a cute little story as hopefully you read above. Well, I had his Baseball-reference page already up, which gives access to game logs soooooo I had to look up the game....
He made the story up. Or at the least this incident didn't happen that day, or in any bigleague game.
He was right on part of it- he pitched against the Pads the day after being dealt. But he never faced Gwynn in his bigleague career. In fact, he didn't give up a hit, it was one the best outings of his short bigleague tenure- one inning, no baserunners. I don't doubt that Gwynn had an impact on him, but that cute anecdote? Didn't happen, at least not in that game. Maybe it happened in batting practice? A spring training game? Possibly. It fits Gwynn's personality. But how the hell are we supposed to know that at this point?
And this pissed me off, because that is a cool story. I want it to be true, or at least be able to have enough of a (lack of) evidence to just believe it! Baseball is built on silly little 'big fish' stories like this, and it just frustates me that I had to a. be so damn curious and b. that the Internet makes it so easy to fact-check silliness like this and find the truth that it isn't how he remembered it, or worse, he felt compelled to make something up. But just as bad? Why did I wasted 15 minutes on a Monday morning looking up Marc Kroon? Damn you internet for this.
