Sweeny: Pineda's Masterpiece Brings Memories Of Guidry's 18-K Performance In 1978
By Sweeny Murti
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The Yankees record for strikeouts in one game is 18 by Ron Guidry, who remains a lifelong Yankees fan and still watches most nights from his home in Louisiana. However, he was one of the last to know that Michael Pineda made a serious run at his record Sunday when he struck out 16 Orioles.
"I just heard. I was busy today with Mother's Day," Guidry said when I reached out to him Sunday night. "I saw the score every once in a while, but other than that I didn't know anything about it."
Pineda didn't get a chance to go for Louisiana Lightning's record because his pitch count reached 111 after seven innings. And Guidry, the Yankees' pitching coach from 2006-07, completely understands. Though when I told him the final score was 6-2 on Sunday, he was quick to remind me, "I pitched a shutout."
Indeed he did, a complete-game 4-0 win over the Angels on June 17, 1978.
And even if he didn't see Pineda's gem, Guidry -- now 64 -- knows he and Pineda were feeling many of the same things throughout the course of the game.
"It doesn't occur often," he said. "Why does it happen tonight and it doesn't happen any time you want (it) to? Well it's not that easy, first of all ... I had to pitch a couple innings before I really felt I had good stuff ... I was high with everything. Around the third inning it started to fall into place.
"Guys were swinging and missing. I didn't try to mess around ... Thurman (Munson) called fastballs and I would just try to throw it over the plate. They were just swinging and missing, and I'm sure a lot of that is what happened (Sunday)."
Guidry, who still works with the pitchers every spring training in Tampa, is a fan of Pineda's.
"He's got nasty stuff," he said. "...As good as anybody in the American League, and it might have been just so much better (Sunday) than it normally has been. Sometimes your stuff is so good, guys just don't take any pitches because they can't. Everything you're throwing is in the strike zone. Everything is close."
Guidry said someone will break his mark one day, just as he had broken Bob Shawkey's six-decades old record of 15 strikeouts in a game. This one has now stood for 37 years, but as Gator reminded me, "It's not that easy or it would occur all the time."
One thing that links both Guidry and Pineda is the two-strike clap by 30,000-40,000 fans, which as far as anyone can remember originated in the Bronx on Guidry' s historic night. It got louder as the game moved along, catching the normally focused lefty a little by surprise.
"People holler at the game anyway, but you learn how to kind of tune them out," he said. "I described it as a distant roar because my mind (was) tuned so much into what I'm trying to do. What I always thought I heard was like a distant roar, like thunder from a long way off. And around the fourth inning it just got so loud.
"And everybody was standing up and doing it so you can't help but hear it. And if I struck out a guy it just got louder."
Guidry struck out the side in the fourth to bring his total to nine, and the crowd didn't let up until he finished with 18.
The record then, and the record now.
Follow Sweeny on Twitter @YankeesWFAN.
