David Wylie’s@@http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=94833&SPID=11401&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=205381553&Q_SEASON=2011@@ submarine delivery has always set him apart from other pitchers, but he’s far from the only pitcher in the country with the strange motion. What makes him even more interesting is he doesn’t always rely on this style — he’ also throws several pitches from a traditional, overhand delivery. There’s one other thing, too: He is an accomplished bagpiper.@@what kind of bagpiper?@@
“I’m probably the only Division-I pitcher who plays the bagpipes, throws submarine and also throws overhand at the same time,” Wylie says.
He began playing bagpipes when he was eight years old at the urging of his father. It wasn’t exactly a match made in heaven — at first.
“I remember at first it was like, ‘I don’t want to do this. I want to go outside and play,’” he says.
That was as enthusiastic as he got about following in his father’s bagpipe-playing footsteps for several years. But once he got good enough to enjoy playing them, he embraced them and his Scottish heritage. Now, Wylie is the proud owner of a kilt.
Baseball always came first, but throughout high school when he wasn’t on the mound, he was participating in bagpipe competitions. When he was 13, he appeared on TV’s “America’s Most Talented Kids.”@@http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361145/@@
While he doesn’t play consistently anymore, bagpipes are still a major part of the righthander’s life. When Wylie runs from the right-field bullpen at PK Park to enter a game, bagpipes are all that can be heard over PK Park’s sound system.
At least until the bass kicks in.
Wylie understands bagpipes are not for everyone, so his walk-up song starts with Dropkick Murphys’@@http://www.dropkickmurphys.com/@@ “bagpipes” before it segues into a 21st-century dubstep mix. He said he made the mix himself after becoming interested with making custom tracks on Apple’s GarageBand — a hobby he says has helped him kill time, especially in airports when the Ducks travel.
The submarine delivery makes Wylie as unique on the mound as he is off it. He says he began throwing submarine early in his high school career while messing around with his friends. One of his coaches saw it and encouraged him to develop it as a pitching motion.
He has used that motion to great effect then, and it made a part of his game perhaps a little bit too efficient. His pickoff move also starts with a submarine motion, and this creates such a whirling-dervish motion that some umpires call it for a balk — which Wylie insists it isn’t. He’s even had to go so far as to tweak his this motion, because it was so hard for inexperienced umpires to dissect what was going on.
When Wylie joined the Ducks as a walk-on this year, his delivery alone wasn’t enough to get by. He worked on developing a few overhand pitches to keep hitters off balance. But even then, head coach George Horton wasn’t entirely convinced Wylie had the stuff to pitch at Division-I level.
“I went to him early, and I said, ‘I’m not sure you’re going to make this team,’” Horton says.
Despite his early concerns, Horton said a depleted pitching staff left him in no position to turn pitchers away, so pitching coach Dean Stiles@@http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=94834&SPID=11401&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=205270474&Q_SEASON=2011@@ began working with Wylie on expanding his repertoire on the mound.
“Lo and behold, Coach Stiles started experimenting with him throwing from two angles,” Horton says. “He started to develop a real good curveball from over the top. He was funky and deceptive, and in the scrimmages, he was one of the most effective guys against our team out of all the guys.”
Wylie admitted feeling resistant to the change at first because throwing overhand takes more of a toll on a pitcher’s body than throwing submarine. At the same time, he understood the coaching staff had his best interests in mind.
“I trust what the coaching staff says,” he says. “I’d do anything for them.”
He said he’s motivated to continue earning more playing time, but he understands that it’s a process. In the meantime, he has quickly developed a reputation as one of the goofier figures in the Ducks’ dugout.
“Dave’s the man,” fellow pitcher Jeff Gold says.@@http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=94833&SPID=11401&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=204836105&Q_SEASON=2011@@ “He keeps everyone loose; he’s the comic relief of the team. He’s just always having fun and always enthusiastic about the game of baseball.”
That oddball attitude doesn’t overshadow Wylie’s will to compete, however, and that was what got Horton’s attention.
“He’s one of those little chihuahuas just gnawing at your ankle, going ‘I wanna pitch, I wanna pitch,’” Horton says. “He just kept saying, ‘I deserve to pitch, I deserve to make this team.’”
Wylie admits he’d like to start next season in the set-up role, but he has another much more important goal for opening day.
“I’d love to have a nice (championship) ring on my finger,” he says. “That would be so special.”