Problems getting two columns into datetime.datetime format - pandas

Question

I have code at the moment written to change two columns of my dataframe from strings into datetime.datetime objects similar to the following:
def converter(date):
date = dt.strptime(date, '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S')
return date
df = pd.DataFrame({'A':['12/31/9999 0:00:00','1/1/2018 0:00:00'],
'B':['4/1/2015 0:00:00','11/1/2014 0:00:00']})
df['A'] = df['A'].apply(converter)
df['B'] = df['B'].apply(converter)
When I run this code and print the dataframe, it comes out like this
A B
0 9999-12-31 00:00:00 2015-04-01
1 2018-01-01 00:00:00 2014-11-01
When I checked the data types of each column, they read
A object
B datetime64[ns]
But when I check the format of the actual cells of the first row, they read
<class 'datetime.datetime'>
<class 'pandas._libs.tslib.Timestamp'>
After experimenting around, I think I've run into an out of bounds error because of the date '12/31/9999 0:00:00' in column 'A' and this is causing this column to be cast as a datetime.datetime object. My question is how I can also convert column 'B' of my dataframe to a datetime.datetime object so that I can run a query on the columns similar to
df.query('A > B')
without getting an error or the wrong output.
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Since '9999' is just some dummy year, you can simplify your life by choosing a dummy year which is in bounds (or one that makes more sense given your actual data):
import pandas as pd
df.replace('9999', '2060', regex=True).apply(pd.to_datetime)
Output:
A B
0 2060-12-31 2015-04-01
1 2018-01-01 2014-11-01
A datetime64[ns]
B datetime64[ns]
dtype: object
As #coldspeed points out, it's perhaps better to remove those bad dates:
df.apply(pd.to_datetime, errors='coerce')
# A B
#0 NaT 2015-04-01
#1 2018-01-01 2014-11-01