by David Nemec
Unrecognized altogether for over half a century was Bill Joyce’s record of 69 consecutive games reaching base safely in 1891 as a member of the American Association champion Boston Reds (in what evolved into the AA’s final season as a separate major league). Joyce’s record, begun in 1890 while with Brooklyn of the Players’ League, was tied in 1941 by by Ted Williams (69) and broken by Joe DiMaggio (74), but at that time no one even knew he had held it. Joyce’s streak was frozen at 69 when he broke an ankle sliding on July 2, 1891, at Boston in a 12–4 win over Washington. His skein ended on October 3, 1891, his first game back in the lineup after his injury interruption, when he went 0-for-3 in a 6–2 win at Boston over Washington’s Kid Carsey.
The current mark is 84 consecutive games, set in 1949 by Ted Williams, the only player in history to compile two such streaks lasting 60 or more games.
9.23 (c) Consecutive-Game Playing Streak
A consecutive-game playing streak shall be extended if a player plays one half-inning on defense or if the player completes a time at bat by reaching base or being put out. A pinchrunning appearance only shall not extend the streak. If a player is ejected from a game by an umpire before such player can comply with the requirements of this Rule 9.23 (c), such player’s streak shall continue.
This could almost be called the “Lou Gehrig Rule.” In Gehrig’s day, there was no formal rule regarding the minimum amount of time a player had to appear in a game to extend a consecutive-game playing streak beyond that his name had to appear in the box score. The present rule was instituted before the 1974 season in conjunction with legislation on what terminates a hitting streak.
One must think that the rulemakers had Gehrig’s shadow on their minds when they decreed that a single plate appearance—even in a pinch-hitting role—would not terminate a consecutive-games-played streak, but a pinch-running appearance would. Obviously a pinch-runner is often in a game longer than a pinch-hitter, who may be around for only a single pitch. Gehrig, however, had a day on July 14, 1934, at Detroit when his back was suffering so bothersome a bout with lumbago that it seemed his streak was at an end. Fortunately, New York was on the road, allowing Yankees manager Joe McCarthy to find an ingenious way around Gehrig’s temporary disability. On his lineup card that afternoon McCarthy penciled in Gehrig as the Yankees’ shortstop and leadoff hitter in place of Red Rolfe.
The record books thus show Gehrig as having played one game at shortstop in 1934, making him one of the rare lefthanders to play a keystone position, even though he never actually served as a short fielder. After opening the game with a single, Gehrig was removed for Rolfe as soon as he touched first base. His streak was thereby preserved, never to be seriously jeopardized again until early in the 1939 season when he began showing symptoms of the incurable neuromuscular disease that would soon claim his life.
Little remembered, however, was that this game just so happened to be the turning point of the season for both clubs. Pinch-running for Gehrig, Rolfe scored the first run of the game as the Yankees took a 4–0 lead after the opening frame. The contest quickly evolved into a free-swinging affair. Heading into the bottom of the ninth, the Yankees led, 11–8, but fell prey to a last-ditch four-run rally that sent the Tigers home with a 12–11 victory, catapulting them into first place ahead of the Yankees by two percentage points. After Detroit won again the following day over the Yanks to take a one-game lead, Mickey Cochrane’s club eventually romped home by a seven-game margin.
Gehrig, of course, held the American League record for consecutive games played as well with 2,130, until Cal Ripken Jr. broke both his career and league records on September 6, 1995. The National League record prior to expansion was much more modest, but also took a bizarre twist along the way. Stan Musial, from April 15, 1952 through August 22, 1957, set a new NL record for consecutive games played with 895, breaking Gus Suhr’s old mark of 822 (Musial’s skein was subsequently broken by Billy Williams.) But if not for a suspended game, Musial’s streak would have ended at 862 games. Musial intended to sit out the second game of the July 21, 1957, doubleheader at Pittsburgh. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported he had not played because “the combination of the doubleheader and the hot humid weather was too formidable.” With one out in the top of the ninth and the Cards ahead, 11–2, Ken Boyer singled and the game was suspended to comply with a Pittsburgh curfew.
When the game was resumed on August 27, Musial immediately pinch-ran for Boyer and then played first base in the bottom of the ninth. The full half inning on defense extended his streak, even though it officially ended after the August 22 game against the Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium in which he tore a muscle and chipped a bone swinging at a pitch from Jack Sanford. The following day, Joe Cunningham replaced Musial at first base.
Definitions of Terms
A BALK is an illegal act by the pitcher with a runner or runners on base, entitling all runners to advance one base.
Imagine a fanatical discussion on the history of the balk rule and its many ramifications. There may have been one, but no inking of it has ever been found. Yet a form of the rule has existed since the Knickerbocker rules of 1845. Spectators and players alike were as confused by it then, as most are now. The current rule book dwells at several different junctures on all the movements a pitcher can make—or fail to make—that constitute a balk. Rather than treat each juncture separately, let’s try to abridge our subject by doing a short overview.
We start by saying that the first balk rule in 1845 was created for the same purpose each new version of it has served in the years since. Which is simply to prevent a pitcher from unfairly deceiving a batter or a baserunner so as to keep either or both off balance by enticing the batter to show his hand as to whether a sacrifice bunt or hit-and-run play is in the offing and by curtailing base stealing.
Forty years later, the first season that overhand pitching was universally legalized, the term had already begun to acquire its present meaning. A balk in 1885 occurred in any of the following instances according to then Rule 29:
(1) If the Pitcher, when about to deliver the ball to the bat, while standing within the lines of his position, makes any one of the series of motions he habitually makes in so delivering the ball to the bat, without delivering it. (2) If the ball is held by the Pitcher so long as to delay the game unnecessarily; or, (3) If delivered to the bat by the Pitcher when any part of his person is upon the ground outside the lines of his position.
The second type of violation was a matter of the umpire’s judgment, whereas the third referred to the boundaries of the pitcher’s box, which in 1885 was a 4 x 6 foot rectangle.
In 1893, the first year that the pitcher’s plate was established at its present distance from home plate, a pitcher was judged to have committed a balk if he did any of the following:
1. Made a motion to deliver the ball to the bat without delivering it;
2. Delivered the ball to the bat while his pivot foot was not in contact with the pitcher’s plate;
3. Made a motion to deliver the ball to the bat without having his pivot foot in contact with the pitcher’s plate; or
4. Held the ball so long as to delay the game unnecessarily.
Before the 1898 season, three more ways for a pitcher to balk were added:
5. Standing in position and making a motion to pitch without having the ball in his possession;
6. Making any motion a pitcher habitually makes to deliver the ball to a batter without immediately delivering it; or
7. Feigning a throw to a base and then not resuming his legal pitching position and pausing momentarily before delivering the ball to the bat.
Contingency 6 might seem unnecessary, since even if a pitcher somehow managed to delude a batter into swinging at a phantom pitch, it could not be counted as a strike. Generally, the ploy was not an effort to dupe the batter, however, but a baserunner for the purpose of getting him to stroll off the bag and then nailing him on the hidden ball trick. Before 1898, a pitcher could pantomi
me his entire delivery routine without having the ball in his possession. Further restrictions on what a pitcher could do while one of his infielders tried to pull off a hidden ball play were imposed in 1920, bringing the rule closer to 6.02 (a) (7) and 6.02 (a) (9), mandating that a balk be called whenever a pitcher stands empty-handed on or astride the rubber.
But though the 1898 balk amendments took a giant step toward the present rule, there was still one more important stride to be made. It was taken in 1899, when for the first time a balk was assessed if a pitcher threw to a base in an attempt to pick off a runner without first stepping toward that base. Prior to then, pitchers had been free to do just about anything they wished in trying to hold runners close to their bases, including suddenly snapping a throw to a base while looking elsewhere. Helped by the new balk rule, National League teams stole nearly 600 more bases in 1899 than they had the previous year, and the Baltimore Orioles set a modern single-season stolen base mark with 364 thefts. Before 1899, pitchers not only could fake throws to first, they could also twitch their pitching shoulders, swing their legs every which way, and utilize many other maneuvers that are now considered balks.
Until the 1954 season, the ball was dead as soon as a balk occurred. There were no exceptions. Regardless of what happened, the runner or runners on base moved up one rung, a ball was assessed if the pitch had been released, and that was that.
The old rule cost an offensive team on many occasions but none more dearly than in 1949, when it played a hand in deciding the National League pennant race. In a Saturday night game at St. Louis’s Sportsman’s Park on August 6, the Cardinals had Red Schoendienst aboard and cleanup hitter Nippy Jones at bat with two out in the bottom of the first against the New York Giants. On the mound for the Giants was lefty Adrian Zabala, one of the numerous players banned from Organized Baseball for five years after jumping to the Mexican League at the start of the 1946 season. The ban had been lifted by Commissioner Happy Chandler two months earlier, allowing Zabala to rejoin the Giants, for whom he had last pitched in 1945. During his forced vacation from the majors, he had acquired some bad habits while pitching in the outlaw Provincial League. Working out of the stretch with a runner on first, Zabala was caught in a balk by second-base umpire Jocko Conlan as he delivered the ball to the plate. Jones, not seeing the signal, concentrated only on the pitch and proceeded to belt it into the bleachers for an apparent two-run homer. However, the prevailing rule at the time canceled the four-bagger and allowed the runner to advance only from first to second. Forced to bat over, Jones flied out to end the inning.
Zabala was subsequently charged with two more balks that night, giving him three in the game to tie the then-existing single-game major-league record. But he was otherwise almost completely in command. The Cardinals managed to scratch out only one tally against him after being robbed of Jones’s two-run dinger, and lost the game, 3–1. Had that defeat wound up in the victory column instead, St. Louis would have finished the 1949 season in a tie with Brooklyn, forcing a best two-of-three pennant playoff.
In a final note of irony, Zabala won just two games in 1949 and never again pitched in the majors.
For all the attention lavished on fine-tuning the various references to balks in the rule book, we are still left to inquire if a pitcher can be charged with a balk if something totally out of his control occurs to interrupt his delivery with men on base. The perfect pitcher to ask would have been Stu Miller. In the first of two All-Star Games in 1961, on July 11 at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, Miller held a 3–1 lead for the National League stars in the top of the ninth when he ran afoul of the infamous “’Stick wind.” With runners on second and third, Miller all of a sudden felt himself being blown off the mound as he prepared to deliver the ball. After the second American League run came home on the balk, the tying tally crossed moments later when the gusting wind spun a roller out of third baseman Ken Boyer’s grasp.
The Americans went ahead, 4–3, with another wind-aided run in the top of the 10th, but then fell victim themselves to the elements. In the bottom of the frame, the NL rallied for two runs when the wind sabotaged Hoyt Wilhelm’s knuckleball and made it easy pickings for first Hank Aaron and Willie Mays and then Roberto Clemente, whose single drove home Mays from second with the winning run.
Despite committing the most famous balk in a midsummer classic and giving up three runs in the 1⅔ innings he worked in relief, Miller got credit for the victory.
The rule that a pitcher, following his stretch, must come to a complete stop before making his delivery was intended to prevent pitchers from quick-pitching in order to hold runners closer to their bases, but through the years it has meant chaos each time a campaign is waged to enforce it to the letter.
In 1950, when it was first expressly stated that a pitcher had to pause a full second after his stretch with a runner on base, 88 balks were called in the first two weeks of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League season after there had only been 54 balks in the two major leagues combined the previous year. Nonetheless, prior to expansion in 1961, the post-1893 record for the most balks in a season belonged to three pitchers with six apiece, last done by Vic Raschi in 1950. Another crackdown in the late 1970s saw Frank Tanana set a new American League single-season record for balks in 1978 with eight and Steve Carlton shatter the National League mark the following year by committing 11. In 1984, with enforcement of the complete-stop rule again more relaxed, Tanana tied for the AL lead in balks with just four and Carlton and Dwight Gooden shared the NL balk title with seven. Then, four years later, MLB moguls decided umpires were not uniformly calling balks and changed Rule 8.01 (b) from:
The pitcher, following his stretch, must (a) hold the ball in both hands in front of his body and (b) come to a complete stop; to:
The pitcher, following his stretch, must (a) hold the ball in both hands in front of his body, and (b) come to a single complete and discernible stop, with both feet on the ground.
The difference between the two rules is that the 1988 version replaced “complete stop” with “single complete and discernible stop, with both feet on the ground.” This slight change, designed to make balk calls uniform, instead kindled one of the most exasperating springs ever experienced by major league pitchers. Just six weeks after Opening Day in 1988, the Braves’ Rick Mahler perpetrated the 357th balk of that season, setting a new MLB record for most balks in an entire season, and it was only the middle of May! Not long afterward, Yankees skipper Billy Martin threatened to upset the applecart by having his pitchers come to a complete stop for five minutes between pitches. By the time the rule was once again relaxed after it threatened to make the game a travesty—junior circuit hurlers alone were assessed an all-time record 557 balks in 1988—A’s ace Dave Stewart had committed 16 balks, still the ML season record, and Rod Scurry of the Pirates racked up 11 in only 31⅓ innings, effectively destroying his bid to come back from a year in the minors after becoming involved with cocaine.
The culprit for the sudden balks explosion was thought without any evidence to support it to be then Commissioner Bart Giamatti, Pete Rose’s nemesis. Whether Giamatti, who banned Rose for gambling on baseball games, was the driving force that propelled balk totals through the roof in 1988 is still a matter of conjecture today, but all individual, team and league balks records set that season still stand and are highly unlikely to be seriously threatened in the near future.
A BASE ON BALLS is an award of first base granted to a batter who, during his time at bat, receives four pitches outside the strike zone or following a signal from the defensive team’s manager to the umpire that he intends to intentionally walk the batter. If the manager informs the umpire of this intention, the umpire shall award the batter first base as if the batter had received four pitches outside the strike zone.
Alexander Cartwright and his cohorts made no reference in their playing rules to a base on balls. The omission exists because until 1863 there was no such thing in baseball as a free trip to first b
ase. To reach base, a player had to hit the ball, even if it took 50 pitches before he got one to his liking.
In the 1863 season, both balls and strikes were called for the first time, with a batter being granted his base after receiving three pitches that were adjudged balls. However, before an umpire was permitted to call a pitch a ball, he was first obliged to warn a pitcher an unspecified number of times for not delivering “fair” pitches or for delaying the game. In essence, far more than three pitches had to be delivered outside the strike zone before a batter received a walk.
In 1874, umpires were instructed to call a ball on every third unfair pitch delivered, meaning that nine balls in all were needed to draw a walk, though technically it came after three called balls. The rule was again amended five years later, allowing umpires to call every unfair pitch a ball until nine were reached. In 1880, a walk was pared to eight called balls and then to seven the following year.