Pitch Counts? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Pitch Counts!

Above is a Kellogg's 3-D card of Fergie Jenkins; below is one of Catfish Hunter. Both men were right-handers, both wore moustaches, and both would have chewed your head off if you'd pulled 'em from a game simply because they'd hit the 100-pitch mark. Fergie completed 267 of his starts over 19 seasons, including 30 CGs with the Cubs in 1971 and 29 more with the Rangers in '74; Catfish racked up 181 complete games in his 12-season career, 30 for the 1975 Yankees alone.

But these days, with managers, pitching coaches and GMs all slaves to the pitch count, the complete game is as rare as an album with more than two memorable songs. In this week's edition of "High and Tight," my weekly baseball column for Rolling Stone Online, Tom Morello, Greg Dulli, Alice Cooper, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Steve Earle, Ben Gibbard, Steve and Scott from The Baseball Project and the rest of our esteemed panelists discuss the legitimacy of the pitch count, and the vanishing beauty of the complete game. Check it out, y'all!