The Official Rules of Baseball Illustrated

by David Nemec

  Prior to the twentieth century, a ball hit foul by a batter with less than two strikes was not deemed a strike. As a result, the American League record for the highest batting average was established in a season when the new loop did not yet recognize the foul strike rule. In 1901, while Nap Lajoie was hitting .426 to set an AL mark that looks unbreakable, the National League for the first time was counting any pitch fouled off by a batter with fewer than two strikes as a strike. The AL did not grudgingly follow suit until two years later. Hence Lajoie’s record—already suspect because the AL in 1901 was operating for the first time as a major league and many of its teams were stocked with marginal players—was further tainted by the fact that he was not charged, as were NL players that year, with a strike for hitting a foul ball.

  In 1901, the AL outhit the NL by 10 points and upped the margin of difference to 16 points in 1902. The following year, the first in which both leagues counted foul balls as strikes, the NL outhit the AL by 14 points, seeming to support the argument that hitters had appeared to be superior in the AL during the previous two campaigns only because they were given the equivalent of an extra strike or two in many of their at-bats.

  The history of the foul pole is a story unto itself. In the nineteenth century, although some parks had foul poles, there was no rule that one had to be equipped with them to help umpires determine whether a batted ball leaving the park was fair or foul. There was only this: “When a batted ball passes outside the grounds, the umpire shall declare it fair should it disappear within, or foul should it disappear outside of the range of the foul lines.”

  Not until 1931 did the rule book say: “When a batted ball passes outside the playing field the umpire shall decide it fair or foul according to where it leaves the playing field.” By that time, there were foul poles in all major-league parks to help umpires gauge whether a ball was fair or foul as it left the park. Where it eventually landed was no longer of any relevance.

  So how important are foul poles? In Pittsburgh’s final game of 1908, a makeup at Chicago on October 4 of an earlier tie game, the Pirates’ Ed Abbaticchio hit what appeared to some spectators to be a two-run homer in the top of the ninth into the right-field stands at Chicago’s West Side Park off a tiring Three Finger Brown to bring the Corsairs within one run of Chicago. But with no foul pole to guide him, Hank O’Day ruled the ball foul. Abbaticchio then struck out, Chicago won, 5–2, and the Cubs claimed the pennant three days later after winning a makeup contest for the famous Merkle tie game against the Giants by a one-game margin over the Pirates and the New York club. A female spectator later sued the Cubs for damages alleging that she was struck by Abbaticchio’s blast and swore the ball had been fair, citing the area she had occupied. But she made a hazy witness under interrogation and her claim was denied. Had it been true and ruled a home run on October 4, 1908, if Pittsburgh had won this game, Fred Merkle would be nothing more than a journeyman first baseman today and O’Day would have umpired his last game of the season and perhaps not reside now in the Hall of Fame, for Pittsburgh would have won the 1908 National League pennant with a 99–55 record.

  An INNING is that portion of a game within which the teams alternate on offense and defense and in which there are three putouts for each team. Each team’s time at bat is a half-inning.

  No one can answer who first brought the term “inning” to baseball. In his original playing rules, Alexander Cartwright made no mention of innings, calling a team’s stint at bat a “hand” and stipulating that even after one club achieved 21 runs or aces, a game could not end until an equal number of hands had been played. In Cartwright’s day, however, it was already common parlance to say a nine must be given its innings. The word inning is thought to have been borrowed from cricket and to signify a period of prosperity or luck. Certainly every team, from the dawn of baseball history, has looked to prosper when it took its turn at bat, but inning actually predates cricket and comes from the old English “innung,” which meant a taking in or a putting in.

  INTERFERENCE

  (a) Offensive interference is an act by the team at bat which interferes with, obstructs, impedes, hinders or confuses any fielder attempting to make a play.

  (b) Defensive interference is an act by a fielder that hinders or prevents a batter from hitting a pitch.

  (c) Umpire’s interference occurs

  (1) when a plate umpire hinders, impedes or prevents a catcher’s throw attempting to prevent a stolen base or retire a runner on a pick-off play, or

  (2) when a fair ball touches an umpire on fair territory before passing a fielder.

  (d) Spectator interference occurs when a spectator (or an object thrown by the spectator) hinders a player’s attempt to make a play on a live ball, by going onto the playing field, or reaching out of the stands and over the playing field.

  Of the four types of interference, spectator interference—especially on a fly ball—was the last to be specifically addressed in the rule book. This hazard did not appear there until 1954. That was the first season in which an umpire was licensed to declare a batter out on a foul or fair fly even when the ball was not caught, if in his judgment a fielder would have made the catch had a spectator not hindered the play. The key word here is judgment. Baltimore fans seated in the right field stands in Game One of the 1996 ALCS on October 9 at Yankee Stadium took vehement exception with right-field umpire Rich Garcia when Orioles gardener Tony Tarasco camped under Derek Jeter’s long fly to right in the bottom of the eighth inning and then watched helplessly as twelve-year-old Jeffrey Maier leaned over the outfield wall and spiked the ball into the stands. After seeing a postgame TV replay, Garcia acknowledged that he been wrong in awarding Jeter a home run to help give the Yankees a come-from-behind 5–4 victory, but AL president Gene Budig nonetheless denied Baltimore’s protest.

  Seven years later, in Game Six of the NLCS on October 14, 2003, at Wrigley Field, Cubs loyalists nearly rioted when several spectators tried to snatch the Marlins’ Luis Castillo’s long foul fly down the left-field line in the top of the eighth inning that Cubs left fielder Moises Alou appeared to have lined up for a catch. Even though left-field umpire Mike Everitt ruled no fan interference, the blame after Alou failed to make the catch soon settled eternally on Chicagoan Steve Bartman when the Marlins rallied from a 3–0 deficit after Castillo reached on a walk and eventually won, 8–3, forcing a Game Seven. In both of these instances, the team that fell prey in front of millions of TV viewers to possible fan interference that was not then reviewable went on to lose the LCS and the pennant. For those of our readers who don’t yet know, the Cubs gave Bartman a World Series ring in 2016 after breaking the 108-year drought since their last world championship in 1908 and Bartman in turn broke his thirteen-year public silence since the incident.

  Joe West celebrated his record forty-first year in blue in 2019 and is second only to Bill Klem in the number of major league games he has officiated. In 2020, he in all likelihood will surpass Klem’s mark of 5,375 games.

  Even though possible fan interference is reviewable now, events with game-changing and even postseason outcome implications still occur that are beyond the current scope of video review and may always be so.

  A quintessential example came on October 17 2018, in Game Four of the ALCS at Houston. In the bottom of the first with a runner aboard and the Astros down, 2–0, Jose Altuve rifled a shot to deep right field that Boston right fielder Mookie Betts got in his sights at the base of the right field wall after a long chase. But when Betts leapt to make the catch, his glove was jostled by a spectator and the ball escaped his grasp and went into the stands for an apparent two-run homer. Right-field umpire Joe West promptly took the two runs off the board by ruling that Betts’s glove had been interfered with before it had crossed the railing above the wall. Houston fans in the immediate vicinity vigorously booed the call. A video review of the play was inconclusive because the view from the one camera angle in the right-field corner that would have clearly captured the l
ocation of Betts’s glove at the moment of spectator impact was blocked by other spectators who were on their feet to better observe the play. Consequently, West’s decision—even though many observers maintained he was poorly stationed to make the call—was perforce allowed to stand because there was insufficient evidence to overturn it. It would likewise have stood if he had ruled Altuve’s blast a home run. As it was, Houston lost the game, 8–6, and eventually the series, four games to one. As for West, he celebrated his record forty-first year in blue in 2019 and is second only to Bill Klem in the number of major-league games he has officiated. In 2020, he in all likelihood will surpass Klem’s mark of 5,375.

  THE LEAGUE is a group of clubs whose teams play each other in a pre-arranged schedule under these rules [of baseball] for the league championship.

  The first baseball teams to band together and play under the rules of the game—then in existence for a so-called “league championship”—were a group of sixteen New York clubs who gathered in 1857 to form the National Association of Base Ball Clubs. The fledgling loop played its games at the Fashion Race Course in Jamaica, New York, assessed spectators a 50-cent admission fee, and adopted the nine-inning format to replace the old first-team-to-score-21-runs-wins rule. All the players in the NABC were simon-pure amateurs, however, or at least that was the circuit’s claim; the notion of openly paying players to perform for one’s team was still more than a decade away from being popularly accepted.

  The first all-professional league did not organize until 1871. Calling itself the National Association, it fielded nine teams and played its first game on May 4, 1871, with Cleveland (Forest Citys) facing Fort Wayne (Kekiongas) at Fort Wayne. The Fort Wayne club played just 19 championship contests before it folded, and no team played more than 33. By 1875, its last year of existence, the NA had swollen to fourteen teams, but only the top three—the Boston Red Stockings, Hartford Blues, and Philadelphia Athletics—played anywhere near a complete schedule. Rife with weak clubs, corrupt players, and lackadaisical team officials, the loop gave way the following season to a new circuit that christened itself the National League, and has remained alive under that name ever since.

  A LIVE BALL is a ball which is in play.

  BUT can more than one live ball be in play? Oh, yes. Throughout the rule book there is much discussion and many comments about what can happen while a ball is in play, but all of them skirt one of the umpire’s greatest nightmares: a situation in which there is more than one ball in play. Perhaps the most memorable occasion when this occurred came on June 30, 1959, in a game at Wrigley Field between the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs. With one out in the fourth inning, Stan Musial of the Cardinals walked on a pitch that hit Cubs catcher Sammy Taylor and home-plate umpire Vic Delmore, and then skipped to the backstop.

  Taylor thought the pitch had ticked Musial’s bat for strike two and began to argue with Delmore. When Musial saw that Taylor was otherwise absorbed, he rounded first and headed for second. Realizing what was afoot, Cubs third baseman Al Dark sped to the backstop to retrieve the ball. But before he could reach it, a batboy picked it up and flipped it to field announcer Pat Pieper. Surprised by the toss, Pieper muffed it and the ball bounded toward Dark, who scooped it up and flung it to shortstop Ernie Banks covering second base.

  Taylor, meanwhile, had absently been given a second ball by Delmore as the two continued to argue. Cubs pitcher Bob Anderson, by then also part of the debate, grabbed the ball from Taylor when he saw Musial streaking for second and threw it over Banks’s head into center field. Musial, who had slid into the bag, picked himself up when he saw the wild heave thinking he had third base cold. But to Musial’s dismay, with almost the first step he took off second, Dark’s throw arrived at the bag, and before he could retreat Banks put the tag on him.

  After a 10-minute delay while all four umpires—Delmore, Al Barlick, Bill Jackowski, and Shag Crawford—conferred, Musial was ruled out. The Cardinals lodged a protest, but it was withdrawn when they won the game, 4–1. We will never know what the ruling would have been had they lost.

  The pitcher’s PIVOT FOOT is that foot which is in contact with the pitcher’s plate as he delivers the pitch.

  Prior to the 1887 season, there was no such designation as a pitcher’s pivot foot and prior to 1893 there were no pitcher’s plates. As of 1887, the first season that the National League and American Association agreed to play by the same rules, the pitcher’s box was 5½ feet long (home to second) by 4 feet wide. Before delivering the ball, pitchers were required to have one foot on the back line of the pitcher’s box at all times, face the batter, hold the ball so the umpire could see it, and were allowed only one step or stride in their delivery. The pitching distance was now 55½ feet from the rear line of the pitcher’s box to the center of home base, but the front line was still 50 feet to the center of home base as it had been since 1881, thereby restricting a pitcher’s single stride forward to 5½ feet—a distance greater than most pitchers could manage with a single step. Hence most were no longer pitching 50 feet distant from the plate but as much as a foot or so more. Each corner of the pitcher’s box still retained either a 6-inch square iron plate or a stone marker.

  In 1893, the pitcher’s box was abolished and replaced with a whitened rubber “pitcher’s plate,” that measured 12 inches (third to first) by 4 inches and lay even with the playing surface. The back of the pitcher’s plate was centered on an imaginary line drawn from the intersection of the third and first base foul lines to the center of second base. The new pitching distance of 60-feet, six inches was measured from the front of the pitcher’s plate to the intersection of the third and first base foul lines. The pitcher was required to keep his rear foot in contact with the rubber when he released the ball, but many hurlers found ways to fudge that requirement, especially when only one umpire was working the game. Some, like Pittsburgh’s Frank Killen, kicked dirt over the rubber, hiding it from view, and then pitched from several inches in front of it. Since the vast majority of games in the mid-1890s still had only one umpire, violations like Killen’s were seldom caught.

  A QUICK RETURN pitch is one made with obvious intent to catch a batter off balance. It is an illegal pitch. Rule 6.02 (a) (5) Comment describes it in detail: A quick pitch is an illegal pitch. Umpires will judge a quick pitch as one delivered before the batter is reasonably set in the batter’s box. With runners on base the penalty is a balk; with no runners on base, it is a ball. The quick pitch is dangerous and should not be permitted.

  Ever since 1887, when a pitcher first had to anchor his back foot before delivering the ball to the batter, there has been a rule of one sort or another against quick-pitching a batter, though it has not always been deemed a balk. In most cases, the pitch was disallowed. Babe Ruth once benefited enormously from such a judgment. In the final game of the 1928 World Series, the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals were knotted at 1–1 in the top of the seventh when Ruth stepped into the box. Ruth already had one homer on the day, accounting for the Yankees’ only run. Lefty Bill Sherdel was on the hill for St. Louis. After getting two strikes on Ruth, Sherdel slipped a pitch past the Babe that everyone in St. Louis’ Sportsman’s Park thought should have been a called third strike. But plate umpire Cy Pfirman, a National League official during the regular season, waved it off, saying it had been agreed before the Series that there would be no “quick returns”—pitches that were unacceptable in the American League but condoned by National League arbiters. Given a reprieve, Ruth clubbed a home run and Lou Gehrig followed with another four-bagger to put the game out of the Cardinals’ reach.

  Quick pitching is seldom called by an umpire at the major-league level anymore, even though it’s been used on occasion in the past few years. But before the 1887 pitching rule change described earlier under Pivot Foot it was a staple of a number of prominent pitchers. Perhaps its leading exponent was southpaw Ed Morris—especially when he was caught by Fred Carroll. The pair were batterymates for seven seasons in
the majors, beginning with Columbus of the American Association in 1884 and subsequently with Pittsburgh entries in three different leagues (the American Association, the National League, and the Players’ League). They mastered the quick pitch to a point where as soon as Morris’s delivery struck his mitt, Carroll would wing the ball back to Morris and the lefty would snag it barehanded and instantaneously fire it in again. In the days before advanced scouting, hitters seeing Morris for the first time were intimidated by this type of pitching. The two batterymates were also among the best of their time at holding runners; Morris had an excellent pickoff move (albeit no doubt an illegal one nowadays) and Carroll an extremely swift release on steal attempts.

  In its early years, the National League put the batter at an even larger handicap to avoid being quick-pitched. Writer/researcher Richard Hershberger found the following discussion in the May 20, 1877, Chicago Tribune regarding an interlude the day before in a game between Chicago and St. Louis, which featured George Bradley and Cal McVey working the points for Chicago in its 7–1 win.

  A question of rules arose yesterday which should not cause a moment’s doubt . . . It is well known that Bradley [pitcher] and McVey [catcher] have at times a trick of sending the ball back and forward with lightning rapidity . . . Yesterday they were putting [Jack] Remsen through this exercise, when he had two strikes in succession called and utterly losing his head he demanded “time” without alleging any reason, but clearly because he was being outwitted. The fact is, he didn’t know whether his head was under his arm or where it was, and he wanted to collect himself . . . The new clause of Sec. 7, Rule 2, which was introduced to cover such causes, is: “The umpire shall suspend play only for a valid reason, and is not empowered to do so for trivial causes at the request of a player.” It can hardly be said to come within this rule to stop play to throw the other side off their balance, or to give time to a rattled player to collect his thoughts. It is doubtful whether any excuse can be found for Remsen’s conduct in standing astride of the plate so as to stop the game until he got ready to have it go on again.