Ah, PitchCom. One the best pieces of tech to come to baseball, giving the ability to pitchers and catchers to tell each other what pitch is coming without the need to throw down signals that can be picked up by opponents.
But on Tuesday night, as squirrels ran amok in Yankee Stadium, reliever Michael King had some trouble with it, so he decided it was time to get rid of it. So he threw it to the Yankees’ dugout.
Except it was a wild pitch … and the device went into the stands.
No worries: It was brought back to the team:
Michael King launched his pitch com into the stands pic.twitter.com/N6RZlkLd7G
— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) May 24, 2023
Here’s more via ESPN.com:
“The one that I got didn’t work. I don’t know if it just wasn’t activated or what,” King said. “It just happened where I was hitting slider at the same time that Ben was hitting sinker. So every time I hit a slider, it was coming through as sinker.” …
“I got nervous ’cause I know you can call time for PitchCom, but I didn’t know if you could do it for a transmitter malfunction. So I just took it off and chucked it,” King said. “I thought it was definitely going to land in front of our dugout, and then it kind of took off like a Frisbee and I saw it floating. And then I saw it almost hit a fan. And then apparently they were hitting the button. Luckily, it wasn’t working.”
Those things cost $5,000, so yeah: Good to get it back.
