by David Nemec
When Steve Carlton was in his prime, sportswriters were quite willing to respect his desire not to give interviews. The loss to their readers was small, they felt. Carlton wasn’t very interesting anyway. What was fascinating, though, was how he got away year after year with cutting the ball. No one ever figured out the instrument Carlton used, and he was scarcely about to break his code of silence to convict himself.
But if Leary’s and Carlton’s techniques for defacing a ball were too subtle to allow an umpire in indict them, Los Angeles Dodgers’ hurler Don Sutton was not so fortunate. Pitching against the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium II on July 14, 1978, Sutton was given the heave in the bottom of the seventh inning by umpire Doug Harvey after he scrupulously collected three balls that had become mysteriously scuffed while in Sutton’s hands. Even though Harvey could not determine how Sutton was doctoring the balls, he defended his ejection by saying, “I represent the integrity of the game and I’m going to continue to do it if necessary.” Sutton responded by suing Harvey for jeopardizing his livelihood. The threat worked. Sutton received only a warning for the incident—never even a fine, let alone a suspension.
6.02 (c) (9) Intentionally Pitch at the Batter
If, in the umpire’s judgment, such a violation occurs, the umpire may elect either to:
(A) Expel the pitcher, or the manager and the pitcher, from the game, or
(B) may warn the pitcher and the manager of both teams that another such pitch will result in the immediate expulsion of that pitcher (or a replacement) and the manager.
The starting points for an umpire who has to decide whether a pitcher is deliberately throwing at a batter are the pitcher’s history, prior events in the game, and his own intuition. Whether or not the pitcher hits a batter is often irrelevant. In a game on May 1, 1974, at Three Rivers Stadium against the Cincinnati Reds, Dock Ellis of the Pirates hit the first three batters he faced in the game—Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, and Dan Driessen—and then threw four fastballs high and tight to cleanup hitter Tony Perez to force in a run. When Ellis nearly nailed Johnny Bench with his next two pitches, still no one thought there was malice aforethought in his wild steak. After all, Ellis had tossed a no-hitter four years earlier and claimed afterward that he did it while on LSD. Finally, though, Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh lifted Ellis before anyone was killed. Said Reds manager Sparky Anderson when asked later for his views on Ellis’s performance: “No one would be crazy enough to deliberately hit the first three men. He was so wild he just didn’t know where the ball was going.” Later it emerged that several days before the game Ellis had purportedly boasted he would throw at everyone in sight once he took the mound.
In contrast, Texas Rangers reliever Bob Babcock was booted from a game against the California Angels on May 26, 1980, at Anaheim Stadium after just one pitch—his first pitch of the season no less! Babcock entered the fray in the top of the seventh inning following a beanball war during the previous frame that had culminated in a benches-clearing brawl after Rangers third baseman Buddy Bell was tossed for charging the Angels’ Bruce Kison on the mound. As a consequence, the umpires were especially vigilant. When Babcock’s first delivery narrowly missed Dan Ford, leading off the inning for the Angels, all four men in blue were convinced he was headhunting on orders from Rangers manager Pat Corrales. Babcock tried to claim his foot had slipped off the rubber as he released the pitch, but no one was about to buy it. He was thumbed from the game by plate umpire Bill Haller almost as soon as the ball whizzed past Ford’s head. The following inning Rangers pinch-hitter Johnny Grubb was hit by a pitch and he and Kison were both tossed when he too charged the mound. The game then fell into the hands of reliever Mark Clear and the Angels lost, 6–5, when their defense unraveled.
Babcock is not the only major-league hurler to be ejected after just one pitch. An even more notorious episode arose in a game at Atlanta’s Sun Trust Park on August 15, 2018, when Miami starter Jose Urena drilled the Braves’ rookie leadoff hitter Ronald Acuna Jr. in the left elbow area with his first pitch of the night in the bottom of the first inning. Acuna had entered the game having homered in a rookie-record five straight games, three of them against the Marlins. At first the umpires seemed inclined to treat Urena’s pitch as simply an errant one. But when Acuna veered off toward the mound as he was starting to take his base and threw off the wrap he wore around his swollen elbow, Braves manager Brian Snitker led the charge out of the Atlanta dugout.
Braves outfielder Ronald Acuna Jr. set a frosh record in 2018 when he homered in five straight games. He conquered the sophomore jinx in 2019 by leading the National League in runs and stolen bases along with belting 41 homers, many of them as the Braves’ leadoff hitter.
That quickly, the event disintegrated into a benches-clearing scuffle with both Urena and Snitker ejected from the game after the umpires huddled around crew chief Paul Nauert. The end result was that stiff warnings were issued to both teams, Atlanta won the game, 5–2, Urena escaped a suspension largely because he carried a reputation for wildness—the 2018 season marked his second in a row leading the National League in hit batsmen—and Acuna’s home-run streak remained intact because he was hit by a pitch in his lone plate appearance. His streak ended the following night, however, in an 11–5 loss to Colorado.
6.03 Batter Illegal Action
(a) A batter is out for illegal action when:
(2) He steps from one batter’s box to the other while the pitcher is in position ready to pitch;
In sandlot games, an argument often arises if a batter switches from batting righ handed to hitting lefty or vice versa when an opposing team has not changed pitchers while he is batting. As Rule 6.06 (b) reads, however, a batter is free to switch to the opposite side of the plate after every pitch. Before 1907, a batter could switch sides even while a pitcher was in the midst of his delivery. Since then the rule has been that if the batter is in the batter’s box and the pitcher is in position to deliver the ball, the batter cannot switch unless time is called by the umpire, allowing him to step out of the box and make the change.
Rule 6.03 (a) 2 makes an attempt by a batter to switch sides while time is in cause for an umpire to declare him out for an illegal action. In the early game it was not uncommon for batters, particularly foxy switch-hitters like Tommy Tucker, to do just that without penalty. One of the first victims of this rule (formerly 6.06 [b]) was Philadelphia Phillies outfielder and leadoff hitter Johnny Bates. In a game against the Cincinnati Reds at the Reds’ Palace of the Fans on August 27, 1910, Bates, a left-handed hitter, was called out by home-plate umpire Mal Eason when he changed to the right side of the plate while Reds pitcher Fred Beebe was in motion. Bates nonetheless went 1-for-3 that day and scored a run in the Phils’ 5–2 win.
Prior to the rule generated by Pat Venditte’s recent arrival in the game, the problem became more complex for an umpire, however, when a switch-hitter faced a switch-pitcher. In a Western Association game in 1928, Paul Richards of Muskogee (the same Paul Richards who would later exasperate umpires with his ingenious tests of the rules as a major-league manager) baffled Topeka hitters by throwing left handed to lefty hitters and right-handed to righty hitters until switch-hitter Charlie “Swamp Baby” Wilson came up in the ninth inning as a pinch-hitter. Each time Richards changed his glove from one hand to the other Wilson matched him by moving to the opposite side of the plate. Said Richards in recalling the incident: “Finally I threw my glove down on the ground, faced him square with both feet on the rubber, put my hands behind my back and let him choose his own poison.” In recounting the story, Richards would always end by slyly confessing he walked Wilson on a 3-and-2 count when he missed the plate with a slow left-handed curve.
Rule 6.03 (a) (5) He uses or attempts to use a bat that, in the umpire’s judgment, has been altered or tampered with in such a way to improve the distance factor or cause an unusual reaction on the baseball. This includes bats that are filled, flat-surfaced, nailed, hollowed, grooved or covered
with a substance such as paraffin, wax, etc.
No advancement on the bases will be allowed (except advancements that are not caused by the use of an illegal bat, e,g., stolen base, balk, wild pitch, passed ball), and any out or outs made during a play shall stand. In addition to being called out, the player shall be ejected from the game and may be subject to additional penalties as determined by his League President.
6.03 (a) (5) Comment: A batter shall be deemed to have used or attempted to use an illegal bat if he brings such a bat into the batter’s box.
This rule was first inserted in 1975. Before then, if a batter was discovered to have struck a ball with a “loaded” or doctored bat, the hit counted and the offending bat was simply removed from the game (although the batter could be subject to further sanctions if it was a repeat violation or a particularly flagrant one). The procedure, if a bat was protested, was for the umpires to inspect it and then either allow it to continue in play or confiscate it for a more thorough examination if it looked suspicious.
Loaded bats have been part of the game almost from its inception. Players in the nineteenth century would often pound nails into the meat ends of their bats and then coat the nail heads with varnish or some other substance that would conceal them from chary opponents. A much more recent incident occurred in 1954 when Cleveland third baseman Al Rosen was found to be using a bat studded with nails after slugging three home runs in a two-game set with the Boston Red Sox on May 18–19. At the time, Rosen was hitting .382 with nine homers and 38 RBIs in just 30 games, and coming off a season in which he had paced the American League in every important slugging department and almost won the Triple Crown. Soon after being deprived of his “magic” bat, Rosen suffered a broken finger. The dual setback caused a dramatic decline in his production. For the remaining 124 games of the 1954 campaign, Rosen hit well below .300 and notched just 15 home runs and 64 RBIs. The sharp drop, even though some of it was definitely attributable to Rosen’s injury, fostered speculation that he may have been using a loaded bat for some time before he was caught.
Caught using a bat studded with nails in 1954, Cleveland third baseman Al Rosen sustained a badly broken finger shortly thereafter. The finger injury is thought to have stopped him from ever again being the great slugger he had formerly been, but it will never be certain whether he used the illegal bat in his MVP season in 1953.
Forty years later, another Cleveland slugger, outfielder Albert Belle, was suspended for 10 games after the corked bat he used in a game on July 15, 1994, was finally confiscated after a byzantine chase by umpires to recapture it following its theft from the umpires’ dressing room. But no bat violation was more embarrassing to its culprit than the one seen by a national TV audience on June 3, 2003, in an interleague game at Wrigley Field between the Cubs and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. In the bottom of the first inning, Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa came to the plate with two on and one out against Tampa’s Geremi Gonzalez. When Sosa grounded out to second base, his bat broke. He was immediately ejected from the game after plate umpire Tim McClelland examined it and found it was heavily corked. Sosa contended the bat had slipped into the game by accident and was used only in batting practice to entertain fans but was nonetheless suspended for seven games.
Probably the most bizarre loaded bat incident in the last half century came on September 7, 1974, at Shea Stadium while the Yankees were using it as a temporary home during a time when their own stadium was being renovated. In the second game of a doubleheader with Detroit, New York third baseman Graig Nettles broke his bat after lining a fastball from Woodie Fryman to left field in the bottom of the fifth . . . and six superballs tumbled out of the barrel. Nettles was declared automatically out, with the out credited to Tigers catcher Bill Freehan, but was not ejected from the game by plate umpire Lou DiMuro even though three innings earlier he had homered for the game’s only run, in all likelihood with the same bat. He was subsequently suspended for 10 games, however, by American League president Lee MacPhail who did not buy his excuse that the bat had been given to him by an admiring fan and he was unaware of its illicit contents. Rules authorities believe the Nettles incident more than any other prompted the creation of Rule 6.03 (a) (5).
6.03 (b) Batting Out of Turn
(1) A batter shall be called out, on appeal, when he fails to bat in his proper turn, and another batter completes a time at bat in his place.
Although the question is not specifically addressed in this rule, the absence of any proscription to the contrary licenses a vigilant fan to lean over the railing behind his favorite team’s dugout and whisper to the manager that an opposition hitter is batting out of turn. Indeed, the only people in a ballpark who are forbidden by rule to call such a violation to a manager’s attention are the official scorer and the umpiring crew. An umpire in particular is required to keep still, which is not to say that all arbiters know or abide by this rule. In her book, You’ve Got to Have B*lls to Make It in This League, Pam Postema recalled the following moment in a minor league game she was officiating:
Once in a while I even showed up a manager or one of my own partners. For instance, one night I had the plate and noticed a batter step into the box who wasn’t supposed to be there. He was batting out of order. Stupid rookie. Just as I was getting ready to call the batter out for hitting out of order, I heard the scorekeeper yell down to her husband, who happened to be one of the managers, “Woody, that’s the wrong batter, honey,” she said.
Too late, I called the guy out and quickly figured out who was supposed to be up next. Meanwhile, my partner, who didn’t have a clue what the rule said, whispered, “Are you sure you’re right?” Hey, it was no big deal to me. I knew the rule. I called it. End of discussion.
Postema’s recollection makes it distressingly apparent that neither she nor her partner nor the official scorer nor the official scorer’s manager-husband knew the present-day rule on a player batting out of order.
However, the rule in 1912 was a bit different. It was not left solely to the opposing team’s manager to inform an umpire that a player had batted out of order.
Dick Cotter, a backup catcher in the NL for two seasons, is listed in all reference works today as having played his last major-league game on September 26, 1912. In actuality, he played his last game six days later on October 2 and emerged as its hero, but it didn’t count. None of it counted because the custom during the 1910s dictated that all statistics from protested games that were thrown out were permanently eradicated. And who was responsible for the game being protested? Not Pittsburgh, the losing team, though technically its secretary officially lodged the protest but only after a writer at the game brought it to his attention long after both teams had left the field that he had grounds for a protest. That nameless writer, it need be said, along with several other scribes at the game, had made frantic efforts from the press box “to put the home team next to the mistake before it was too late.”
The muddle began in the bottom of the ninth when Cotter, a right-handed hitter, pinch-hit for Wilbur Good, a left-handed hitter who had been sent up to bat for Cubs pitcher Jimmy Lavender and was called back when the Pirates replaced right-hander Howie Camnitz on the hill with southpaw Hank Robinson. Cotter ripped a single over first base that brought home Cubs outfielder Cy Williams with the run that tied the game, 5–5. Cotter then stayed in the contest, replacing catcher Jimmy Archer who had been pinch run for by Williams, while Charlie Smith replaced Lavender on the hill. After Smith held Pittsburgh scoreless in the visitors’ half of the 10th frame, Chicago threatened in the home half, bringing Cotter to the plate with two out and a chance to drive in the winning run. Only Cotter this time was batting not in the ninth spot in the order, which Lavender had occupied, but the eighth spot, which had belonged to Archer. With two out and Vic Saier on second and Frank Schulte on third, Cotter lined a single over second base off Robinson to plate Schulte with the walk-off winning run—at least insofar as everyone connected with the Pittsburgh and Chicago club
s then believed.
Meanwhile, umpires Brick Owens and Bill Brennan had been aware that Cotter had batted out of turn when he hit in the eighth spot instead of the ninth, the spot he’d occupied when he entered the game, but looked the other way because they “thought it was up to the opposing team to claim the point, so did not declare Dick out.” The New York Sun said both officials “waited for manager [Fred] Clarke to lodge a protest, but none was forth coming, and Owens, the-umpire-in-chief that day, declared that no further protests could be made, that the chance was lost when the Pirates rushed from the field.” They learned otherwise before the evening was out when soon after they wired the protest on Pittsburgh’s behalf to NL president Tom Lynch, Lynch read them the riot act.
Since the Giants had already clinched the NL pennant—ironically on the day that Dick Cotter played his final official ML game—the protested contest was not replayed because it meant nothing.
Except to Dick Cotter.
6.03 (b) (7)
When an improper batter becomes a proper batter because no appeal is made before the next pitch, the next batter shall be the batter whose name follows that of such legalized improper batter. The instant an improper batter’s actions are legalized, the batting order picks up with the name following that of the legalized improper batter.
Rule 6.03 (b) (7) Comment: The umpire shall not direct the attention of any person to the presence in the batter’s box of an improper batter. This rule is designed to require constant vigilance by the players and managers of both teams.
There are two fundamentals to keep in mind: When a player bats out of turn, the proper batter is the player called out. If an improper batter bats and reaches base or is out and no appeal is made before a pitch to the next batter, or before any play or attempted play, that improper batter is considered to have batted in proper turn and establishes the order that is to follow [for the remainder of the game].