K.C. Star: Posnanski: Royals pitching advisor Fischer shares wisdom of 60 years in baseball

Good stuff here…as Poz chats with Royals’ senior pitching advisor Bill Fischer, about the four absolutes of four-letter word pitching.

They call Bill Fischer “Walking Wisdom” around here, which makes the guy laugh. Walking Wisdom, eh? Yeah, they should have been there that day in ’63, 11th inning, when ol’ Walking Wisdom pitched for the Kansas City A’s and decided to throw a bleeping fastball to Mickey Mantle. The Mick blasted it off of the bleeping right-field facade at Yankee Stadium. They called it 620 feet. They called it 734 feet. Whatever, it was bleeping far.

“Of course if Mickey Mantle was playing at Yankee Stadium today,” Fischer says, “with the bleeping fences in, with center field at 400 feet, he’d hit 800 bleeping homers.”

Bleep. You can probably tell that Bill Fischer does not exactly buy into the walking wisdom thing. First off, Fish ain’t walking too good. He’s 77; they got him a golf cart to scoot around in as the Kansas City Royals’ senior pitching advisor. Senior is right. Fish has been in baseball for 60 years; only Don Zimmer has been puttering around the game full time for that long. Zim’s written two books about it.