His initial assignment was to the Staten Island Yankees of the Class-A Short-Season New York–Penn League. On June 19, 2008, in his first minor league appearance with Staten Island against the Brooklyn Cyclones, Venditte pitched a scoreless ninth inning for a Yankees win. Before Venditte faced the last Cyclone batter, Ralph Henriquez, a switch-hitter, upon choosing to bat left- or right-handed (with Venditte subsequently choosing to pitch with the same hand), Henriquez would then go to the other side of the plate (and adjust his shin guard—which is worn on the front leg when a batter takes his stance) to regain the advantage. After this had happened several times the teams appealed to the umpiring crew, which ruled that the batter must first select from which side of the plate he intended to hit, and that the pitcher would then be allowed to declare with which arm he would pitch (the Venditte Rule, adopted several weeks later by the umpires' association, would make the opposite determination and preserve the traditional right of a switch-hitter to choose an opposite-handed match-up). Venditte subsequently struck out Henriquez, who slammed his bat against the dirt, to end the game. A film of the incident received notoriety on the Internet and the tale was recounted in a number of places, including within the baseball compendium "Rollie's Follies".