3 days rest - What's the big deal?

NEW YORK -- Like everything else in baseball, pitching isn't an exact science. There are as many opinions about throwing a ball 60 feet, 6 inches as there are men who have made their living at it.

The modern theory is that pitchers need adequate rest between starts. The prescribed recovery time is usually four days. That's why Curt Schilling's start on just three days' rest in Wednesday night's Game 4 of the World Series created such a fuss.

Four days off between starts would have seemed like a summer vacation for pitchers of previous generations. To them, rest was overrated, especially in October.

Bob Gibson started three times for St. Louis in the 1964, 1967 and 1968 World Series and thought it was no big deal.

"When you talk about doing it the full season, there might be a tendency to wear down," he said. "But in the World Series? If you can't get up for that, what's the sense of being there? You don't feel tired until the World Series is over. You rest in November, December and January.

"They'd say, 'How do you feel? Do you feel you can do it? Don't lie to me.' I knew I could do it. If I got beat, I'd find an excuse."

Two days rest

Gibson in 1964 and Sandy Koufax in 1965 took the frequent pitcher points program a step further, both winning Game 7 of the Series on two days' rest. Koufax added an exclamation point to that accomplishment by pitching a shutout.

"When I threw the seventh game on two days rest, around the fifth inning, I felt like I needed help," Gibson said. "I was tired.

"In 1964, I pitched nine innings on the last Friday, seven innings on Sunday, because we needed the game, and then started the second game of the World Series. I pitched the fifth game and the seventh game. I pitched four or five games in 10 days. They asked me how I felt and I said I felt great. I lied."

Gibson said in his era, clubs kept pitch counts but never did much with the results.

"One time, I threw 197 pitches in 14 innings," he said. "Nobody cared. They always counted pitches. They were interested in how many you threw. The next start, I went 12 innings, and the next start after that, I went 10.

"I don't know what the big deal is pitching with three days rest or four days rest. You go out and do the best you can and hope it all turns out all right.

Lew Burdette was a three-game winner for the Milwaukee Braves in 1957 and Mickey Lolich did the same thing for Detroit in 1968 in a head-to-head showdown with Gibson.

None of this was viewed as much of a big deal in those days. With most teams using four-man rotations, pitchers pitched. One of the main proponents of regular work was Johnny Sain, a mainstay of the Boston Braves' staff with Warren Spahn after World War II and later a prominent pitching coach.

Sain never believed in babying arms. "Check out my complete games," he said.

From 1946-50, he pitched 115 of them. In 1948, he had nine complete games in 29 days. "My first 64 wins in the majors were all complete games," he said.

Pray for rain

In 1948, the Braves won the pennant with the motto that over the years has become known as "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain."

Sain recalled the formula. "Spahn and I pitched on two days' rest all year," he said.

That seems a bit extreme, but when Sain became Ralph Houk's pitching coach with the New York Yankees in 1961, he sold his boss on discarding Casey Stengel's every-fifth-day pitching recipe. The immediate beneficiary was Whitey Ford, who became a 20-game winner for the first time, going 25-4.

Sain was Detroit's pitching coach in 1968 when Denny McLain was baseball's last 30-game winner. He also was instrumental in Lolich winning three World Series game, including the last one on two days' rest.

"We pitched every four days then," Lolich said. "These guys are pampered. They pitch every five days. They have pitch counts. There are no complete games."

Originally, the Game 7 plan in 1968 was for Lolich to pitch five innings. That stretched to six, seven and eventually a complete game win. He finished that Series with a 1.67 earned run average, high compared with Burdette's 0.67 in 1957 and the 0.38 Koufax had in 1965. Burdette and Koufax each had two shutouts.

"It was nothing special for me," Burdette said. "I had pitched three complete games in eight days before, quite a bit. These pitchers today don't seem to have stamina. I don't see how you build stamina without using your arm."

Yankees manager Joe Torre, an ex-catcher, always points to Gibson, who missed much of the 1967 season with a broken leg but came off the disabled list to pitch three complete game victories in the World Series. He never worried about how many days he had off between starts.

"There is so much emotion involved with what goes on in the postseason that being tired isn't something that normally gets people, because you really are going on adrenaline," Torre said.

But pitching strategies have changed, especially with the reliance on bullpens. The Yankees have occasionally tried quick turnarounds for their pitchers with no real success.

"We are counting pitches now," Torre said. "Now, you hit 110, 115 pitches and you go, 'Wow.' The normal, the average game 10 or 15 years ago was like 128, 130 pitches in a game."

Torre hears about that all the time from bench coach Don Zimmer, who growls that pitchers have to throw. It is a theory that is thoroughly endorsed by others of his generation, an era in which Schilling would have been entirely comfortable.