The Baseball Codes

by Jason Turbow

  “I thought it was unbelievable, ridiculous,” said Lowry. “Sometimes during a game emotions take over. The emotions were already there, and to add that icing on the cake…. There comes a point where you have to draw the line and say, ‘Hey, have respect for me, have respect for the game.’”

  It wasn’t until afterward that the left-hander found out about Fick’s ribs (the injury was enough to send the would-be catcher to the disabled list the next day) and the various maladies of Washington’s other catchers, and he felt terrible. Had there been some communication—Fick telling Giants catcher Todd Greene about his predicament, and Greene relaying that information to Lowry, perhaps—might it have made a difference?

  “Yeah, of course,” said the pitcher. “Knowing he was hurt would have been a completely different story…. When I heard about why he was doing it I felt like a jerk. But, not knowing, you just play the game the way you know how to play it.”

  The only way a major-leaguer can steal 130 bases in a season is if some of them come at inappropriate times. Rickey Henderson, the only guy to have achieved that total, wasn’t much concerned with the opinions of his opponents, and occasionally paid the price when angry pitchers went gunning for retribution. Henderson, of course, had a built-in defense mechanism—no pitcher wants to put on base a guy with an unrivaled ability to score from first without a ball ever leaving the infield. Henderson’s Hall of Fame–caliber myopia was also well known—what Rickey did on a ballfield had nothing to do with anyone but Rickey. How could a guy who played only for himself possibly show someone up? With those things in mind, many pitchers opted to leave him alone.

  “Let me tell you about Rickey,” said Lopes, who teamed with Henderson in Oakland for two and a half seasons and professes to maintain an abiding affection for him despite the incident in Milwaukee. “How can I say this? You kind of let certain things slide because it’s Rickey being Rickey. Did he really know he was showing you up? Was he trying to, or was he just oblivious to the whole situation, saying, ‘What’s everybody mad at me for?’”

  “He was Rickey,” said Bruce Jenkins, who covered the A’s for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1982, when Henderson set the stolen-base record. “He was just way too cocky. But he was also innocent. He had no malice at all.”

  No matter how innocent Henderson may have been, or what kind of danger he represented on the base paths, he did manage to elicit responses from a few pitchers, whose retaliatory strikes took a toll in an unusual way. “One thing about Rickey that nobody seemed to consider was that he threw left-handed but he batted right-handed, so when he got drilled his elbow would get swollen,” said A’s teammate Dave Henderson. “Everybody would get on his weak throwing arm. But you forget that when we get drilled it’s our glove hand. When Rickey got drilled it was his throwing arm. Everybody used to get on him about missing the cutoff man and having a weak arm, but that’s because it was always so swollen. When your elbow’s pregnant, it’s hard to throw.” Indeed, when Henderson first got to the big leagues, the book on him was that he had a fantastic arm; over the years, however, it became a liability, part of the price he paid for being Rickey.

  Of course, before Rickey was Rickey, Lou Brock was Lou Brock, and when the Cardinals outfielder stole a then-record 118 bases in 1974, he too took occasional liberties. Brock figured, said teammate Bob Gibson, that if a big lead is good, a bigger lead is better. “When Brock would keep stealing after we had built a three- or four-run lead, guys on the bench would say, ‘Goddamn it, Brock, you can’t do that!’” Gibson recalled. “He’d say, ‘Fuck you. I’m gonna do it.’ … His attitude was to beat the other team as badly as possible, and that was my kind of baseball.”

  2

  Running into the Catcher

  In a collision at the plate in 1973, Al Gallagher, leading with his left shoulder, knocked Boston catcher Carlton Fisk backward, failing to dislodge the ball but managing to seriously piss off the Red Sox star, who gave him an ominous stare as he made his way back to the dugout. Gallagher had to avoid a Luis Tiant fastball in his next at-bat, an obvious message, at which point Fisk started in verbally from behind the plate. Gallagher took kindly to neither gesture, and the benches quickly emptied.

  The play wasn’t especially noteworthy—similar things happen nearly every day around baseball—but it serves as a good example for the rules governing such collisions. To wit: After the game, Fisk, known for his adherence to the unwritten rules, seemed almost remorseful about his actions. “Gallagher had every right to the baseline,” he said. “I guess I just got tired of eating my lunch at home plate every day.”

  Which just about says it all: Catchers don’t much enjoy being run over, but it is part of their job description—most of the time. If a catcher is prepared for an impact, virtually anything goes. If the runner catches him before he can set up, however, the catcher is exceptionally vulnerable, which is why the Code offers protection in that situation, approving collisions only when necessary. (Of course, just as runners are discouraged from hitting a catcher who doesn’t yet possess the baseball, so too is it known that a catcher has no business standing in the baseline before the ball arrives. This gray area must often be navigated in an eyeblink as a situation unfolds.)

  Among the most famous plays in this category was Pete Rose’s flying takeout of Cleveland catcher Ray Fosse in the 1970 All-Star Game in Cincinnati. In the twelfth inning, as Rose tried to score from second on a base hit, the throw from outfielder Amos Otis came in up the line toward third, forcing Fosse to move toward Rose to field it.

  Rose, who usually slid feetfirst into the plate, opted instead for the showmanship points of a dive. As Fosse moved up the line, however, Rose belatedly realized that such a tactic would take him directly into the catcher’s shin guards and a certain out. Staggering, he righted himself, then plowed ahead and straight through Fosse, who hadn’t yet caught the ball. The hit was so forceful that Rose missed the next three games.

  It was a hard play and a clean hit, but it was also an exhibition game with nothing on the line but pride. Which is why, when Fosse was diagnosed with a separated shoulder that ultimately affected the rest of his career (he missed no time but hit only two home runs the rest of the season, after hitting sixteen previously, and never again hit more than twelve), the question was raised: Was it worth it?

  “Look, I’m the winning run in the All-Star Game in my hometown,” said Rose. “I just want to get to that plate as quickly as I can. Besides, nobody told me they changed it to girls’ softball between third and home.”

  To compound matters, Fosse was bowled over twice more in the season’s second half on virtually identical plays in which he was moving up the line to field errant throws. “They were young players, rookies,” he said of the runners involved. “I don’t know if they thought, ‘Pete Rose can do it in an All-Star Game, so I can do it too.’ On one of the teams I looked over into the dugout and there were a couple of players I knew. They kind of gave me that look that says, ‘I can’t understand why he did that.’ It was as much about what happened afterward as what happened at the All-Star Game itself.”

  Catchers, of course, are far from defenseless, and the Code offers them copious opportunity for retaliation. Fosse’s retort to one of those players involved grinding the ball into his face on a later play at the plate. “I can still see his eyes,” he said. “He was saying, ‘Oh my God, it’s payback time.’” When the runner was called out, he simply picked himself up and returned to his dugout without a word.

  “I might take a spike in the shoulder, but I’ve got my shin guard in his neck,” said Fred Kendall, who caught in the big leagues for a dozen seasons and whose son, Jason, became an All-Star catcher in his own right. “There are ways to counter it, if that’s the way he’s going to play…. If I take the baseball and put it in the web of my glove—the web, not the pocket—and I tag you, it’s just like taking a hammer and whacking you in the teeth; if I take my mask off and I throw it right where you’re going to sl
ide; if I place my shin guards the right way, it’s like sliding into a brick wall.”

  Catcher Ron Brand put it more succinctly. “If you get the ball in time,” he said, “nobody can hurt you.”

  3

  Tag Appropriately

  The tactics of aggressive infielders go relatively unnoticed on a baseball diamond, plied under cover while thousands of unsuspecting fans look elsewhere: a catcher’s shin guards crunching down on a player’s leg, an infielder’s knee atop the fingers of a diving baserunner, even a relay throw at eye level to force a runner to bail out of the way. The only people completely aware of the nastiness are the guys who bear the brunt of the attacks, who know all too well that infielders are happy to turn the tables whenever possible.

  A fierce tag is one of the primary methods a fielder can utilize to be intentionally aggressive. It doesn’t necessarily stop baserunners from attempting to take extra bases, but it’s certain to make them aware that the opposition’s paying attention. “I’d tag guys hard on the head, on the hands,” said shortstop Chris Speier. “If you’re going to steal this base, you’re going to pay for it.”

  “If you’ve got a clear shot to slap him in the face, do it,” said another middle infielder. “The next time, he’s going to take you out into left field, and he won’t even apologize.” Negro Leagues shortstop Willie Wells is said to have gone so far as to shove rocks into the fingers of his glove to lend extra heft to his tags.

  The players best able to batter an opponent in such a manner are first basemen, who over the course of a single at-bat can field multiple pickoff throws and lay down a succession of punishing tags. Few baserunners complain about the practice, but all are aware of which players to watch out for.

  “Willie Stargell would slap you so nicely,” said Dusty Baker. “He’d smile, then drop that hammer on your head, on your ribs…. It makes you shorten your lead. The ball would be right in the web of the glove, and it was the ball that hit you on the bone. It would be up against the smallest, skinniest part of the glove, and—pow!—oh boy, that would hurt. Pops would slap you silly over there, and what could you do?”

  “Randall Simon and Carlos Delgado just beat you up,” said noted base-stealer Dave Roberts in 2007. “That’s just what they do. It’s why I try not to stay at first base too long, to get out along my way.”

  Many of these men are actually known as nice guys who are well liked around the game. Bill White didn’t let a friendly disposition keep him from pounding the heads of runners who dived back to first base. Willie McCovey delivered among the hardest blows in the business (although, like Stargell, he did it with a smile), inspiring Lou Brock to claim that leading off against the Giants was the worst experience one could have. (Will Clark labeled McCovey’s tag “the Sledgehammer.”) There’s a reason that so few players complained about it, however: These fielders are all protected by the Code, which says it’s just the price runners pay for doing business.

  4

  Intimidation

  The pitcher has to find out if the hitter is timid, and if he is timid, he has to remind the hitter he’s timid.

  —Don Drysdale

  When Phil Garner was a young infielder with the Oakland Athletics, he made a mistake that would inform his decisions on plate strategy for the rest of his career. Facing Nolan Ryan in a 1976 game, Garner flailed at six fastballs in his first two plate appearances, many on the outside corner. Such was his futility that he was inspired toward action that in retrospect he sees as inexplicable: He tried to extend his reach by crowding the plate.

  “I leaned out to just peck the ball,” he said. “In a flash, in that thousandth of a second, I saw his fastball, thrown as hard as he could throw it, coming right behind my ear. My whole life passed before me. I tried to dig a hole beneath the batter’s box, because I was scared to death.”

  It was all the edge Ryan needed. The pitcher got two quick strikes, and, said Garner, “as he was winding up to throw his next pitch, I was already walking to the dugout. It was strike three for me, and I was just happy to be out of there.”

  The power of intimidation cannot be overstated in sports. If, as Yogi Berra famously said, 90 percent of the game is half mental, then dominating the mental half will produce impressive results. The most accomplished professionals will attest—as Yogi was probably trying to—that physical tools don’t mean a thing without proper focus. And part of that focus involves imperviousness to tactics of intimidation.

  The most humbling intimidator on a baseball diamond is simple, overwhelming success. If, going into a game, a player or team feels that the battle is already lost, then it probably is. As the 1998 Yankees were rolling up 114 wins, for example, every team they faced looked on with admiration and a healthy dose of trepidation. For teams without that level of ability, the easiest advantage to gain is through a bullying presence. Skill, after all, is finite; fear is not. “If a guy’s just wearing you out, you might knock him down,” said longtime Oakland A’s pitcher Steve McCatty. “You don’t want somebody feeling comfortable up there. It’s common sense.”

  Take someone like Hugh Casey, who was never able to become a full-time starter over his nine-year big-league career in the 1930s and ’40s, but was nonetheless one of the most feared pitchers in the game, a reputation owed mostly to his willingness to throw at the head of any opponent at any time. Baseball annals are filled with legendary knockdown stories featuring as their primary characters Casey’s fastball and some unwitting dupe who took it upon himself to crowd the plate.

  “He was mean,” said his teammate Dodgers pitcher Rex Barney. “He would set you up and then he would knock you down. And he’d look you right in the eye when he did it, too. And yes, he’d actually throw at guys in the on-deck circle. I saw him do it in Brooklyn.” (In 1946, Casey did, in fact, throw a pitch at Marty Marion of the St. Louis Cardinals, who was standing near the batter’s box, timing Casey’s warm-ups—a violation of another unwritten rule.) Casey even went so far as to throw three straight pitches at the head of plate umpire George Magerkurth in 1941, after Magerkurth had called a dubious balk on him to force in a run.

  None of this endeared the pitcher to anyone other than his teammates, but it was terrific for his reputation. Casey led the league in hit batsmen in his first full season, and drilled six more the next year, in addition to his steady array of knockdowns and brushbacks. The message went out immediately, and he rode that intimidating reputation to the end. The reality, however, says something different. The eighteen victims over his first two seasons constituted more than 60 percent of his career total; Casey never again plunked more than two men in a year. Hitters were afraid of him, and that’s all that mattered.

  Twenty-five years later, hitters were also afraid of Dock Ellis, who in at least one regard was more fearsome than Casey: Whereas it took the old Brooklyn star two full seasons to cement his reputation, Ellis earned his stripes over the course of a single game. The right-hander possessed a clear understanding of the power of intimidation, having seen it in action as his Pittsburgh Pirates teams terrorized the rest of the National League, bullying their way to three division titles and one World Series between 1970 and 1972. In ’73, though, things began to change—the Pirates inexplicably lost their bravado and many more games than expected, finishing below .500 and in third place in the National League East. When they opened 1974 by lurching into last place with a 6-12 record, Ellis took it upon himself to spur a roster-wide attitude adjustment.

  He chose as his victims the Cincinnati Reds, themselves coming off two straight division titles and on their way to ninety-eight wins. If Pittsburgh’s new timidity tipped the balance of swagger in the National League against them, the prime beneficiary was Cincinnati. Ellis wanted to reverse that trend.

  “[Other teams used to] say, ‘Here come the big bad Pirates. They’re going to kick our ass.’ Like they give up,” said Ellis, who later gained notoriety when it became known that the no-hitter he threw in 1970 was augmented by LSD. “That�
��s what our team was starting to do. When Cincinnati showed up in spring training, I saw all the ballplayers doing the same thing. They were running over, talking, laughing and hee-haw this and that. Cincinnati will bullshit with us and kick our ass and laugh at us. They’re the only team that talk about us like a dog.”

  When Ellis took the mound against Cincinnati on May 1, 1974, he had only one strategy in mind: to drill every batter that stepped in against him. The first was Pete Rose, who ducked out of the way when a first-pitch fastball sailed toward his head, then jumped forward to avoid the second pitch, which flew behind him. The third pitch, aimed at his rib cage, found its mark. Man on first, nobody out.

  The second batter, Joe Morgan, caught Ellis’s first pitch with his kidney. First and second, nobody out. Third up: Dan Driessen. Ellis’s opening shot sailed high and inside for a ball. The second pitch found the middle of Driessen’s back.

  The bases were now loaded, but the pitcher was hardly deterred. Cincinnati’s cleanup hitter, Tony Perez, took stock of the carnage and realized his only possible salvation was to stay light on his feet. He proceeded to dance around four straight offerings—including a near wild pitch that flew behind him and over his head—to draw a walk and force in the game’s first run. When Ellis went 2-0 to Johnny Bench, Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh couldn’t take any more and removed the pitcher from the game.

  “[Ellis’s] point was not to hit batters,” wrote Donald Hall in Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball. “His point was to kick Cincinnati ass.” His point was also to inspire his teammates, to instill a measure of toughness in a languor-prone Pittsburgh squad. It might be coincidence, but after that game—which the Reds won, 5–3—the Pirates went 82-62 and won the National League East for the fourth time in five years.