Tooting a rival pitcher’s horn after two striking performances

By Ron Kantowski

Monday, April 21, 2008 | 2 a.m.

The first thing I noticed about Stephen Strasburg was that he wasn’t wearing a hiking boot. Or playing the French horn.

After reading that Strasburg, a sophomore pitcher at San Diego State, had struck out 23 batters in a Mountain West Conference game against Utah last weekend, I figured that Sidd Finch, heretofore only a figment of George Plimpton’s imagination, had come to life and was warming up in the left-field bullpen.

In 1985 Plimpton crafted a famous story in Sports Illustrated about a New York Mets rookie named Sidd Finch, who wore a heavy hiking boot when he pitched and could hit 168 mph on a radar gun but was torn between playing baseball and the French horn. The story was published on April Fool’s Day and was a hoax, at least until last weekend, when “The Curious Case of Sidd Finch,” or something quite like it, came to life in a frenzy of swinging and missing like few had ever seen.

When was the last time somebody punched out 23 batters in a baseball game? The most Nolan Ryan had was 19. Roger Clemens made it to 20 twice, Kerry Wood once. Bugs Bunny once struck out the side against the Gashouse Gorillas with one pitch, pasting those pathetic palookas with his powerful, paralyzing, perfect pachydermous percussion pitch. But, as I recall, Bugs came out of the bullpen. Even Tatum O’ Neal, in “The Bad News Bears,” needed defensive help from Timmy Lupus in right field to record the final out.

The college record for strikeouts is 26, by Miami of Ohio’s Buddy Schultz against Wright State in 1973. Wilbur and Orville were totally overmatched. The last college kid to fan 23 was Neal Heaton of Miami of Florida (who went on to pitch in the big leagues) against Indiana State in 1981.

Strasburg, who was so lightly recruited out of San Diego’s West Hills High School that even UNLV had a shot at him, allowed only one ball hit out of the infield on the fly against Utah. Had Timmy Lupus been playing right field, it would have been a can o’ corn. Only five balls were hit, period — and two of those were sacrifice bunts. One of the Utes, finding a bat useless against Strasburg, nudged a ball through the infield using a rolled-up San Diego Union-Tribune for a harmless single.

It was the Utes’ only official hit.

“The plate looked really close. It looked like I could just reach out and set it (the baseball) in the catcher’s glove,” said Strasburg, who started his San Diego State career as a closer but became a starter after shedding 30 pounds and adding some zip to his fastball.

While he has gained velocity, he has lost none of the control that made him an effective closer. He hit a batter against Utah and walked one, although some of the Utes complained afterward that some of his pitches, which now touch 100 mph on a radar gun, sounded low.

“I had days this year where my stuff felt better,” Strasburg said.

“Guys were teasing me, saying why couldn’t you get 24 or 25?”

He almost needed to strike everybody out because it was a crazy college baseball game in another way. It featured only one run, and if the Aztecs hadn’t scored it and the game had gone to extra innings, there’s a chance that Strasburg might have struck out 33 or 43 or 53, he was so dominant.

His coach had never seen anything like it, and that’s saying something, because his coach has seen a lot. Tony Gwynn, a baseball Hall of Famer, once saw Kevin Brown strike out 16 Astros. But he never saw anybody strike out 23. That’s just crazy, Gwynn said.

“It was like a Nintendo game,” he said.

Those weren’t joysticks that UNLV was swinging Friday night, either. Just to show last week’s game wasn’t another figment of the imagination, Strasburg struck out the first six Rebels he faced. He finished with 13 K’s but pitched only seven innings, because when your team is ahead 15-0, it’s not important that you finish what you started, especially when Moonlight Graham hasn’t gotten to play in a while.

Strasburg allowed the Rebels just four hits and didn’t walk a single batter in improving his record to 5-1 and lowering his earned-run average to 1.73, which in college, where they swing aluminum bats and the wind seemingly always blows out, seems impossible.

Afterward, Gwynn said Strasburg didn’t have his best stuff. At first, I thought he was joking. But he meant it.

“He’s maturing and he’s learning how to pitch and he’s gaining confidence as he goes along. There’s no question his stuff is going to be good enough (to pitch in the major leagues). The question is, can he handle all the other stuff? All the attention, all the focus.”

Gwynn scolded this reporter for talking to Strasburg without permission but then spent the next 15 minutes praising him. “He’s a soft-spoken kid and we’re trying to protect him a little bit but when you strike out 23 guys, you become the focal point really quickly,” he said in resignation.

With guys like super agent Scott Boras now stopping by to check out his stuff, it’ll probably stay that way for at least another year, until Strasburg becomes draft eligible again.

But if he ever gets tired of the attention, I suppose there’s always the French horn.