The Roger Angell Baseball Collection

by Roger Angell

  For me, the true mystery of the slider is not its flight path but the circumstances of its discovery. Professional baseball got under way in the eighteen-seventies, and during all the ensuing summers uncounted thousands of young would-be Mathewsons and Seavers spent their afternoons flinging the ball in every conceivable fashion as they searched for magic fadeaways and flutter balls that would take them to Cooperstown. Why did eighty years pass before anybody noticed that a slight cocking of the wrist would be sufficient to usher in the pitchers’ Golden Age? Where were Tom Swift and Frank Merriwell? What happened to American Know-How? This is almost a national disgrace. The mystery is deepened by the fact that—to my knowledge, at least—no particular pitcher or pitching coach is given credit for the discovery and propagation of the slider. Bob Lemon, who may be the first man to have pitched his way into the Hall of Fame with a slider, says he learned the pitch from Mel Harder, who was an elder mound statesman with the Indians when Lemon came up to that club, in 1946. I have also heard some old-timers say that George Blaeholder was throwing a pretty fair slider for the St. Louis Browns way back in the nineteen-twenties. But none of these worthies ever claimed to be the Johnny Appleseed of the pitch. The thing seemed to generate itself—a weed in the bullpen which overran the field.

  The slider has made baseball more difficult for the fan as well as for the batter. Since its action is late and minimal, and since its delivery does not require the easily recognizable arm-snap by the pitcher that heralds the true curve, the slider can be spotted only by an attentive spectator seated very close to home plate. A curve thrown by famous old pretzel-benders like Tommy Bridges and Sal Maglie really used to curve; you could see the thing break even if you were way out in the top deck of Section 31. Most fans, however, do not admit the loss. The contemporary bleacher critic, having watched a doll-size distant slugger swing mightily and tap the ball down to second on four bounces, smiles and enters the out in his scorecard. “Slider,” he announces, and everybody nods wisely in agreement.

  The mystery of the knuckleball is ancient and honored. Its practitioners cheerfully admit that they do not understand why the pitch behaves the way it does; nor do they know, or care much, which particular lepidopteran path it will follow on its way past the batter’s infuriated swipe. They merely prop the ball on their fingertips (not, in actual fact, on the knuckles) and launch it more or less in the fashion of a paper airplane, and then, most of the time, finish the delivery with a faceward motion of the glove, thus hiding a grin. Now science has confirmed the phenomenon. Writing in The American Journal of Physics, Eric Sawyer and Robert G. Watts, of Tulane University, recently reported that wind-tunnel tests showed that a slowly spinning baseball is subject to forces capable of making it swerve a foot or more between the pitcher’s mound and the plate. The secret, they say, appears to be the raised seams of the ball, which cause a “roughness pattern” and an uneven flow of air, resulting in a “nonsymmetric lateral force distribution and … a net force in one direction or another.”

  Like many other backyard baseball stars, I have taught myself to throw a knuckleball that moves with so little rotation that one can almost pick out the signature of Charles S. Feeney in midair; the pitch, however, has shown disappointingly few symptoms of last-minute fluttering and has so far proved to be wonderfully catchable or hittable, mostly by my wife. Now, at last, I understand the problem. In their researches, Sawyer and Watts learned that an entirely spinless knuckler is not subject to varying forces, and thus does not dive or veer. The ideal knuckler, they say, completes about a quarter of a revolution on its way to the plate. The speed of the pitch, moreover, is not critical, because “the magnitude of the lateral force increases approximately as the square of the velocity,” which means that the total lateral movement is “independent of the speed of the pitch.”

  All this has been perfectly understood (if less politely defined) by any catcher who has been the battery mate of a star knuckleballer, and has thus spent six or seven innings groveling in the dirt in imitation of a bulldog cornering a nest of field mice. Modern catchers have the assistance of outsized gloves (which lately have begun to approach the diameter of tea trays), and so enjoy a considerable advantage over some of their ancient predecessors in capturing the knuckler. In the middle nineteen-forties, the receivers for the Washington Senators had to deal with a pitching staff that included four knuckleball specialists—Dutch Leonard, Johnny Niggeling, Mickey Haefner, and Roger Wolff. Among the ill-equipped Washington catchers who tried to fend off almost daily mid-afternoon clouds of deranged butterflies were Rick Ferrell and Jake Early, Early eventually was called up to serve in the armed forces—perhaps the most willing inductee of his day.

  The spitball was once again officially outlawed from baseball in 1974, and maybe this time the prohibition will work. This was the third, and by far the most severe, edict directed at the unsanitary and extremely effective delivery, for it permits an umpire to call an instantaneous ball on any pitch that even looks like a spitter as it crosses the plate. No evidence is required; no appeal by the pitcher to higher powers is permissible. A subsequent spitball or imitation thereof results in the expulsion of the pitcher from the premises, instanter, and an ensuing fine. Harsh measures indeed, but surely sufficient, we may suppose, to keep this repellent and unfair practice out of baseball’s shining mansion forever. Surely, and yet … Professional pitchers have an abiding fondness for any down-breaking delivery, legal or illegal, that will get the job done, and nothing, they tell me, does the job more effectively or more entertainingly than a dollop of saliva or slippery-elm juice, or a little bitty dab of lubricating jelly, applied to the pitching fingers. The ball, which is sent off half wet and half dry, like a dilatory schoolboy, hurries innocently toward the gate and its grim-faced guardians, and at the last second darts under the turnstile. Pitchers, moreover, have before them the inspiring recent example of Gaylord Perry, whose rumored but unverified Faginesque machinations with K-Y Jelly won him a Cy Young Award in 1972 and led inevitably to the demand for harsher methods of law enforcement. Rumor has similarly indicted other highly successful performers, like Don Drysdale, Whitey Ford, and Bill Singer. Preacher Roe, upon retiring from the Dodgers, in 1954, after an extended useful tenure on the mound at Ebbets Field, published a splendidly unrepentant confession, in which he gave away a number of trade secrets. His favorite undryer, as I recall, was a full pack of Juicy Fruit gum, and he loaded up by straightening the bill of his cap between pitches and passing his fingers momentarily in front of his face—now also illegal, alas.

  It may be perceived that my sympathies, which lately seemed to lie so rightly on the side of the poor overmatched hitters, have unaccountably swung the other way. I admit this indefensible lapse simply because I find the spitter so enjoyable for its deviousness and skulking disrespect. I don’t suppose we should again make it a fully legal pitch (it was first placed outside the pale in 1920), but I would enjoy a return to the era when the spitter was treated simply as a misdemeanor and we could all laugh ourselves silly at the sight of a large, outraged umpire suddenly calling in a suspected wetback for inspection (and the pitcher, of course, rolling the ball to him across the grass) and then glaring impotently out at the innocent (“Who—me?”) perpetrator on the mound. Baseball is a hard, rules-dominated game, and it should have more room in it for a little cheerful cheating.

  All these speculations, and we have not yet taken the ball out of the hands of its first friend, the pitcher. And yet there is always something more. We might suddenly realize, for instance, that baseball is the only team sport in which the scoring is not done with the ball. In hockey, football, soccer, basketball, lacrosse, and the rest of them, the ball or its equivalent actually scores or is responsible for the points that determine the winner. In baseball, the score is made by the base runner—by the man down there, just crossing the plate—while the ball, in most cases, is a long way off, doing something quite different. It’s a strange business, this unique double life
going on in front of us, and it tells us a lot about this unique game. A few years ago, there was a suddenly popular thesis put forward in some sports columns and light-heavyweight editorial pages which proposed that the immense recent popularity of professional football could be explained by the fact that the computerlike complexity of its plays, the clotted and anonymous masses of its players, and the intense violence of its action constituted a perfect Sunday parable of contemporary urban society. It is a pretty argument, and perhaps even true, especially since it is hard not to notice that so many professional football games, in spite of their noise and chaos, are deadeningly repetitious, predictable, and banal. I prefer the emotions and suggestions to be found in the other sport. I don’t think anyone can watch many baseball games without becoming aware of the fact that the ball, for all its immense energy and unpredictability, very rarely escapes the control of the players. It is released again and again—pitched and caught, struck along the ground or sent high in the air—but almost always, almost instantly, it is recaptured and returned to control and safety and harmlessness. Nothing is altered, nothing has been allowed to happen. This orderliness and constraint are among the prime attractions of the sport; a handful of men, we discover, can police a great green country, forestalling unimaginable disasters. A slovenly, error-filled game can sometimes be exciting, but it never seems serious, and is thus never truly satisfying, for the metaphor of safety—of danger subdued by skill and courage—has been lost. Too much civilization, however, is deadly—in this game, a deadly bore. A deeper need is stifled. The ball looks impetuous and dangerous, but we perceive that in fact it lives in a slow, guarded world of order, vigilance, and rules. Nothing can ever happen here. And then once again the ball is pitched—sent on its quick, planned errand. The bat flashes, there is a new, louder sound, and suddenly we see the ball streaking wild through the air and then bounding along distant and untouched in the sweet green grass. We leap up, thousands of us, and shout for its joyful flight—free, set free, free at last.

  Starting to Belong

  — June 1972

  JUNE IS WHEN BASEBALL REALLY begins. Now partisanship deepens, and we come to the time when the good weather and the sights and sounds of the game are no longer quite enough. In June, even casual semi-fans begin to watch the standings, and true believers—adherents of free silver and the Expos and similar causes—secretly put aside some of their wild April hopes as they see that this season, like the others, will be mostly pain and misadventure, and that part of their attention must now be given to the leaders and the other principals in the long pennant drama. For me, at least, all this has been slow to happen this year. Part of that is attributable to the bitter, unprecedented strike called by the Players Association at the end of March, which wiped out the first two weeks of the season and did away with most of the anticipation and good cheer of baseball’s spring. But I have begun to notice I am more hesitant than I once was to give my full attention to the games and adventures of the early season, and more inclined to linger on the one that is just past. This year, April and May seemed to deepen my recollection of last October, when the Pirates and Orioles played that brilliant and breathless turnabout seven-game World Series, which was won in the end by the hitting and throwing and the burning will of Pittsburgh’s Roberto Clemente. It was a Series especially worth thinking about and putting to memory, but I suspect that many fans may suffer from a similar nostalgia every spring. We are afraid to commit ourselves too quickly or eagerly to the time at hand. We hold back a bit, remembering the passions and rewards of the season just past, remembering how we cared, and wondering if this new season can matter as much to us. It’s almost like being in school—being back in college again. Can this term be as good as the last one? Who will my friends be? Will I fall in love again? Will these new courses be any good? Waiting, we watch and take notes.

  Scorecard: Early June. July and midseason creeping up, yet baseball year still at loose ends. Distracting sort of campaign, suggesting no-score ball game in which 15 base runners stranded in first 4 innings; eventful yet forgettable. To date: Hank Aaron wafts 1 doz. homers, passing W. Mays and running maybe 1l/2 seasons short of the Babe’s 714. Willie probably relieved. Willie also rejuvenated & rejoicing as new Met, out from under heavy 20-yr. burden as Giants’ deity & leader, plays occasional 1B or OF for Metsies, signs autogs., runs bases like a 10-speed bike, wins games. Maysless Giants (also McCoveyless, thanks to broken McC. wing) plummet to NL West cellar. Similar early fatuity for a while afflicts Baltimore, perennial AL Ozymandias (now down to 1 Robinson, after winter trade of F. Robby to Dodgers), whose grizzled vets rarely hit ball beyond infield, let alone into stands. Total early Oriole departure from race prevented only by lack of consist. or zing among other AL East clubs. Cleveland like a mayfly—takes early wing, expires on same afternoon. Tigers like bullfrog escaping a well—jumps up three feet, slips back two. Yankees … Yankees like nothing in nature. Most sedative BB team in memory, so uninspired as to suggest bestowal of new sobriquet: Bronx Sashweights? CBS Plastercasts? Red Sox, diminished by tradeoff of dissidents & gripers, lose injured Yastrzemski for early going; Yaz previously heavily booed at Fenway, has not hit much for almost 1 yr. Mystery.

  Unhappy celebs also include Giants’ Juan Marichal, in bed with aching back after early 1 win–8 loss record, and Cards’ Bob Gibson, now back on track after early zip–5 mark. But prime addition this yr. to annals’ human fatuity is to be seen in utter inability to retire major-league hitters (and later, in and around bushes of Birmingham, Ala., minor-league hitters) displ. by once colorful, now pathetic Denny McLain. Denny’s extinguishment nearly accompanied by similar disapp. of Vida Blue, last year’s Lochinvar & this year’s toilet-fixture exec., who took new employment during long salary holdout vs. Oakland boss Charles O. Finley (chance here to use word “ineffable”)—the ineffable Charles O. Finley, whose difficulties with help are legend. All BB owners’ difficulties with help now legend. Owners mostly, almost wholly, respons. for players’ strike. (Chance here to use other descript. adjectives. Resist impulse.) Strike wipes out 1st 2 weeks of play, gets season off to unstart that prob. still casts aforesaid sense of distraction & foolishness over entire BB scene.

  (Historical note, proving game no longer hobbled by hoary traditions, superstitions: Phillies, in midst of terrible losing streak, refuse to fire manager. Fire general manager instead. Go on losing.)

  The strike: There will be no attempt here to recapitulate all the issues in that painful and tedious dispute, but it does seem essential to recall that the Players Association from the beginning offered to compromise or submit to arbitration its ultimate point of difference with the owners—the use of accumulated funds in the players’ pension plan to increase the benefits currently being paid out. The owners declared any accommodation to be an absolute impossibility until a total of eighty-six games and several million dollars in revenue had drained away, whereupon they compromised, exactly as they could have done before the deadlock set in. A last-minute modicum of patience on both sides might have averted the whole thing, but not everyone wanted peace. It is clear that some of the more dedicated Cro-Magnons among the owners (including the Cardinals’ Gussie Busch, the Reds’ Frank Dale, the Mets’ Donald Grant, and the Royals’ Ewing Kauffman) saw the strike as a precious opportunity to strain, and perhaps crack, the labor union of their upstart, ungrateful young employees and, above all, to discredit its executive director, Marvin Miller. Most of the owners, to be sure, would deny such an intention, but the unchanging and apparently unchangeable characteristic of their fraternity is its total distaste for self-discipline—a flaw that anarchizes the entire body and repeatedly renders it victim to its loudest and least responsible minority. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who has been criticized for not playing a stronger hand in settling the strike, does not in fact have any power over the owners in such a crucial situation; these businessmen, in contrast to the players, chose to remain undirected and largely unadvised throughout the crisis
.

  The corporate masochism of baseball scarcely ranks as news, and neither labor relations nor the size of players’ pensions is the end of the game’s problems. Among the other hovering anxieties is the deepening disparity in quality and attendance between the two major leagues. Last year’s record total attendance did not conceal the fact that the National League outdrew the American by nearly five and a half million customers—17,324,857 to 11,858,560. The gap is widening this year, with the NL running ahead of last season’s comparable attendance figures, and the AL behind. The difference between the leagues in quality and attractiveness of play is harder to prove, but it can be suggested: so far this spring, National League batters have hit over one hundred more home runs than their American League counterparts. New ball parks attract new customers: the American League has four modern parks (counting the stadium to be opened next year in Kansas City), but with the exception of Wrigley Field, every park in the National League is less than fifteen years old. I am not attracted to this means of rebalancing, however, because I detest the appearance and flavor of most modern ball parks, which seem to have sprung from the same architectural tradition that brought us the shopping mall. I also believe that fans would respond with pleasure and alacrity to a more challenging but far less expensive solution to the American League’s problems—better ball teams.*