I highly encourage watching this video before reading further, as it shows a perfect example of how the term “sword” became a common reference in the baseball world. In the movie Benchwarmers, Gus (Played by Rob Schneider) befriends Clarke and Richie (Played by Jon Hader and David Spade) After being bullied by a bunch of little leaguers, Gus teams up with Clarke and Richie and challenges the young ball players to a game for their field. They end up playing a bunch of teams in a tournament to get revenge for all of the kids who were ever bullied into not playing sports. It’s a stupid and funny movie, that all baseball players can appreciate for all those quippy one liners. David Spade shows off one of the more non athletic swings you’ll ever see a person take trying to hit a baseball, to which Schneider’s character replies, “don’t chop at it, it’s not a sword.” Thus the term, “sword” was added into every baseball players trash talk bank.
David Spade isn’t the only player to show off the “sword” in the baseball world, as the Pitching Ninja highlights. Even the best of players can be fall victim to it. It just further highlights the fact that hitting a baseball is on of the hardest things to accomplish in any sport, especially when the ball is moving ways that it shouldn’t. To me it brings me back to those wiffle ball days where you would try and manipulate the ball to make it have that crazy movement. This is also a testament to how pitchers are evolving in the game of baseball. With all of our new technology that can measure spin rate, pitchers are learning how they can perfectly spin the ball to get the most effective movement out of their pitchers. I believe Adam Ottavino, is a perfect example of this. In an empty storefront in Harlem he used motion high speed cameras to reinvent his cut fastball and slider after being left off the Rockies postseason roster in 2017. Ottavino had an amazing 2018 year before signing with the Yankees for a three year $27 million dollar deal. He has certainly had his fair share of “swords” over the years.
As a pitcher this is just as satisfying for me as hitters pimping home runs. No better form of flattery than watching a hitter look that ridiculous trying to swing a bat. There’s even a part in the video where the hitter ultimately ends up swinging at one of the pitches that hit him. I feel like if you have that type of swing the at-bat is just over, tough to recover from that. As the hitter you just have to tip your cap and hope the pitcher doesn’t throw that same pitch again. Your usual top pitchers of the game are featured multiple times in this video including multiple CY Young award winner Jacob DeGrom and Gerrit Cole who could have easily won a CY Young Award for his performance in 2019. One of my favorite parts about these videos are the pitcher reactions. You can either go two ways, most of the pitchers stop and admire their “sword” worthy swing , or you can go stone cold and not even give the hitter the time of day. For an example go to the end of the video and watch Cole get his “sword” and not even look at the poor hitter laying on the ground. Absolutely ruthless and it just makes me miss baseball even more.
I just wanted to thank all of these sports accounts who continuously put out content for us sports starved fans during this time. It’s these types of videos that makes us miss sports, but gives us something to look forward to when we finally overcome this pandemic. We are all suffering right now and it’s content like this that gives us the motivation to continue being safe so we can get back to these beautiful “sword” swings sooner rather than later.
The Washed Up Athlete 