Marvin Sewell: Stepping Up to the Plate

I remember the Chicago Cubs pitcher, Ray Burris, on one of those programs, saying "if you're a fifteen-year-old kid, you shouldn't be throwing curveballs, you should be throwing fastballs and change-ups." He said "your arm isn't developed enough to be throwing that stuff." And one of the best pitches in baseball is the change-up. If you have a good change-up, that scares the hell out of the batter. If somebody has a good change-up, that's scary. If somebody would have taught me the basics of pitching instead of just throwing a ball and using my body, maybe I would have been doing something else. Because I was good at it, but I hated pitching. I hated it!

GC: What a shame. I tried to be a pitcher; I think there was just one game where I hit a bunch of batters. I think I had pretty good speed, but I would just choke. I was a catcher for a while but it was hard to find a left-handed catcher's mitt. So we'd have to drive to New York and look around for one. I sort of just got into different things. But yeah when I was kid I thought maybe I'd play baseball. That's interesting.

MS: Yeah, the Orioles beat the Sox in '83. That was a good team.

GC: Well that was the last time—when was the last time the Orioles were good? The '80s?

MS: Yeah in '83 they took everything I think...I can't remember. I know they beat the White Sox 3-1.

GC: That was when Earl Weaver was manager, and you had Eddie Murray, Mark Belanger, Jim Palmer.

MS: Eddie Murray man...I would just cringe every time he came up to bat. I was like "aw, shit."

GC: Since then I haven't been to the new stadium...Camden Yards? But I used to go to Memorial Stadium a lot, see double headers, but then I just fell out of it, got into a different thing. Alright, I can't think of any final questions, but this is plenty!

Photo Credit

Alexey Karpovich