Baseball’s “pitch count” - whether it’s in Little League or the Major Leagues, or any level in between - has a way of dictating a manager’s decision with regard to who they want on the mound.

That certainly wasn’t the case decades ago, when tireless hurlers would pitch to their heart’s content, and their managers would let them.

It was almost 60 years ago when he would have blown the “pitch count” theory out of the water, but for a hard-throwing Bobby Gelatko - the Lansford native enshrined in the Carbon County Hall of Fame - being sent out inning after inning was routine, and something he enjoyed.

Gelatko - perhaps the best athlete ever to come out of Lansford - hurled an amazing 17 innings 59 years ago this month in a decisive 4-3 win over St. Clair in the talent-rich Anthracite League.

Wearing a Jeddo Stars jersey, Gelatko accomplished what is unthinkable today - going the distance, and fanning 22 batters.

There was no such thing as a pitch count that day, but based on an average of five pitches per batter, it’s safe to assume Gelatko unleashed about 300 pitches to get the 51 outs in the marathon game. Add about 35-40 tosses to warm up before the game, and seven allowable pitches before each inning (119 warm up tosses in 17 innings), and other pitches he threw to batters who reached base safely (he allowed only five hits), a conservative guess is that he wound up between 400-500 times that day.

“I was dehydrated a bit, but I never wanted to come out of a game,” recalled Gelatko, who said he doesn’t remember being pulled for a reliever during his career.

“In between innings, I was at the water bucket, getting a dipper full of water, and I think I went to the bathroom every inning,” he said.

Among his memories of the game were his six strikeouts of St. Clair’s Ed Sharockman, who later would be named that high school’s Athlete of the Century. Sharockman went on to play 12 years of football with the Minnesota Vikings.

At age 19, Gelatko was termed an “iron man” by the Lansford Evening Record that year, considering that three weeks before the 17-inning tilt, he hurled 16 innings for East Stroudsburg State College in a 7-2 win over Wilkes University, when he fanned 12 batters, allowed seven hits and walked just one.

“To me, the thing I appreciated the most, was I had two of those (marathon) games in 4-5 weeks. I was fortunate; my arm was strong enough to do it a second time,” Gelatko said.

Banner year

The 17- and 16-inning games were just a part of the outstanding year Gelatko enjoyed in 1964, as between college (5-1) and playing for Jeddo (11-0), he had a pitching record of 16-1 and an ERA of 1.63.

Not surprisingly, he was invited to make tryout appearances with the Yankees, Cardinals (twice) and Pirates, although he didn’t pursue them, partially due to a neck injury he sustained in football.

Only 5-6 and 138 pounds, Gelatko was also a sensation on the gridiron, starring for Lansford High School, where he played three seasons for the Panthers.

But his career on the diamond started when he played Teener League for the Lansford Hawks, winning the batting title two years in a row and once being named the top hurler.

Moving on to LHS, he and Frank Bydlon - another Carbon Hall of Fame inductee - became starters for the Panther baseball team as freshmen. The highlight of Gelatko’s scholastic career came when he twice pitched Lansford to wins over Hazleton (3-2 in 10 innings and 3-0 in a game in which he held the Mountaineers hitless into the seventh inning). He also once fanned 18 batters in a game versus Freeland and also tossed a no-hitter - one of four in his career - against Northwestern Lehigh, striking out 15.

Gelatko has fond memories of other baseball playing days, specifically when he played Legion ball for Palmerton. Asked to play there by Frank Hager, a Nesquehoning resident who had ties to Palmerton, Gelatko and a few of his Lansford teammates played for Joe Carazo in Palmerton, where they competed in the Lehigh Valley League.

In a game against Allen, he recalled, Palmerton was leading Allen 4-3 in the ninth. Gelatko was on the hill, and he walked three batters to fill the bases with no one out. And he ran a 3-0 count on the fourth batter.

“Like I said, I was never taken out, and Joe (Carazo) left me in. Sure enough, I was able to come back and get the batter on strikes, the next guy popped up and I got the third out on a ground out, so we won the game,” he remembered.

Stayed in shape

As for the number of pitches he threw on any given day, Gelatko said, “It’s certainly different today. In today’s baseball world, coaches keep a close watch on the number (of pitches thrown).”

Rules of today’s game dictate that, too. For instance, Little Leaguers are limited to 85 tosses in a game, the intent, obviously, being to focus on the safety of pitchers’ arms. For the record, then New York Mets pitcher Justin Verlander’s 117 pitches in June against the Blue Jays is the most thrown by any MLB starter this year. The single game record is held by Nolan Ryan, who threw 235 pitches in 1974 for the Angels in a 4-3 win over the Red Sox.

But, for Gelatko, he said he always felt a key to success was staying in shape. “I was always in tip-top shape,” he said. “In fact, after that game against St. Clair, I came home to Lansford, and jogged from the coal company headquarters at Edgemont all the way up to Andrewsville, and back.”

To strengthen his arm, he used about a one-foot section of a railroad tie to “pump iron,” so to speak, adding, “I was never a big fan of lifting weights.”

Gelatko went on to a teaching and baseball coaching career at Panther Valley High School, piloting the Panther diamond squad for 17 years, during which time the Panthers were area champions several times. Speaking of pitching, one of the most exciting times of that era, he said, was when PV’s Bob Polinsky matched up against Blue Mountain’s Lance Rautzhan in a Schuylkill League pitching match-up won by the Panthers 1-0. Both pitchers ended up in the major leagues, with Gelatko saying his hurler (Polinsky) was one of the best he ever saw.