Fear of the wrath of a stern commissioner may suffice to deter some pitchers from cheating. Hershiser invokes a yet higher authority. “I feel that if I would scuff the ball or cheat, God would not honor my ability and my trying and all of a sudden my record would start going down. He would punish my witness. I don’t know if God is like that. I read in the Bible that He will correct us. I know I could be better, better at a human level, but I don’t know if, at the spiritual level, I could live with myself. I just can’t do it.” He pauses, thinking. “Maybe when I’m forty and I gotta do it to do it, I’ll see it differently. Spiritually, I’ll figure out a way. ‘Lord, let me make this money and I’ll give it to the church.’” And he laughs the carefree laugh of someone for whom 40 is still only a rumor.
Later Hershiser returns, unbidden, to the subject of cheating. “The guys that do it are actually stealing money out of the honest guys’ pockets.” His suspicion is that the scuffers who are successful draw fans to the ballparks, make money for everyone and so are left alone. Baseball’s enforcers might come down on a scuffer who is the tenth man on a pitching staff, but he is probably not effective and is probably being hit hard or he would not be the tenth man, so why bother? “I don’t know. If they make it an unwritten rule that you can do it, if they are not going to go after guys, I think I will spiritually say it’s okay. Just like a shortstop or second baseman says I don’t need to actually touch second base when turning a double play.”
In late July, 1989, when Mike Scott of the Astros drove the Dodgers deeper into fifth place with his sixteenth win, Hershiser dropped his diplomatic reticence: “[Scott] cheats up a storm. It’s not too much fun to sit there and watch him cheat. It’s unbelievable. It’s not just speculation. It’s fact. I know guys that have played with him. [Astros first-base coach] Phil Garner played with us, he said [Scott] did it. Other guys have, too. Even umpires say he does it. But they say the league won’t back them up after Don Sutton tried to sue Doug Harvey for charging him with scuffing.” Scott replied that no pitcher is more closely watched (because more constantly accused) than he is. He has, he said, been checked and rechecked and not found guilty. Scott also said he did not care what Hershiser thinks and added, “I would be ticked, too, if I was 15 games out of first place.”
Pitchers tend to be conspiracy theorists. Pitchers tend to be correct. Pitchers believe that owners, pandering to the unwashed mob that does not appreciate the artistry of pitching, are constantly plotting to handicap pitchers and increase offense. The pitchers are mistaken only in thinking this is a conspiracy. A conspiracy is supposed to be secret. The plot against pitchers is about as secret as a steam calliope. However that may be, Hershiser, like most pitchers, believes baseball is forever finding ways to be beastly to pitchers. “There never,” he states categorically, “has been a rule change favorable to the pitcher.” He exaggerates, but only a bit. The last time pitchers benefitted much from a rules change was more than a century ago. (What will some people want to change next, to the detriment of pitchers? The bats, as we shall see in the next chapter.)
It is hard to say where, back in the mists of history, the origins of baseball are. However, it is reasonable to say that baseball as we know it began in the 1880s. Pitching is the heart of the game and by 1887 the rules had been changed enough to allow pitching as we know it. In their exhaustive treatise, The Pitcher, John Thorn and John B. Holway note that baseball’s first codified rules, written in 1846 by Alexander Cartwright, said this: “The ball must be pitched, not thrown, for the bat.” Note the preposition “for.” The distinction between pitching and throwing was that a pitch must be delivered underhand and with a stiff wrist. A pitcher was an unglamorous functionary obligated to help the batter put the ball in play. Until 1887 the batter was even allowed to tell the menial pitcher to serve up the ball high or low.
Law follows culture and mores and in 1872 baseball’s rules surrendered to the fact that by then most pitchers were snapping their wrists as they released the ball, although they still had to release it from below the waist. In 1872 the rules changed to legalize this and pitchers became what Cartwright had called, disapprovingly, throwers. In 1887 another failed prohibition ended and pitchers were allowed to throw overhand. Today the distinction in baseball talk between pitching and throwing is reversed. It’s the distinction between artifice and mere power. Pitching is the science of systematically confusing batters. Throwing is reliance on raw strength. A pitcher is what a thrower becomes when he gets serious (or older, which is much the same thing).
When restrictions were removed from the pitcher’s use of his own arm and wrist, the anti-pitching forces fell back to fight on another front. In 1879 the rules stipulated nine balls before a walk was awarded. Then the plotting against pitchers got into high gear. The number of balls for a walk was lowered to eight, then seven, then six, back up to seven for one season, then five, then four in 1889. (For one season, 1887, a strikeout required four strikes, but this was going too far even for dedicated persecutors of pitchers.)
While the rules were becoming less permissive about how many times a pitcher could miss the strike zone, pitchers were developing ways of making the ball behave oddly en route to, and while passing through, the strike zone. The patron saint of modern pitchers might be William Arthur “Candy” Cummings, a 120-pound lad who, in the summer of 1863, while other young men were crossing the wheat field at Gettysburg and completing the siege of Vicksburg, was tossing clamshells, making them “turn now to the right, now to the left.” The first curveball was a clamshell. By 1867 Cummings was curving balls around Harvard’s bats for the New York Excelsior Club. Batters have not really been happy since then. But batters have been having most of the rules changes go their way. The pitcher’s location has changed from a boxlike area (hence the phrase “knocked out of the box”) to a slab of rubber on an elevation. At one point early on, the pitcher was allowed a run-up in the area of the box, like a bowler in cricket, before uncorking a pitch. But the pitcher’s mound was moved from 45 feet away from home to 50 feet in 1881, and in 1893 it was moved to its current distance of 60 feet 6 inches. The arrival of Wilt Chamberlain and other dominant centers caused changes in the rules of basketball concerning the dimensions of the lane in front of the basket. Similarly, the final change in the location of the pitcher’s mound was provoked (or so it is said) by the fastball of Amos Wilson “The Hoosier Thunderbolt” Rusie. Connie Mack, who saw every great pitcher from Cy Young to Bob Feller, said Rusie threw hardest. His fastball must have been a scorcher if it drove the pitcher’s rubber back 10 feet. In any case, the change did not bother Rusie, who was 29–18 in 1893. However, the major league batting average soared from .245 to .280. That is not surprising, considering that putting the pitcher farther away increased the time the batter had to see the pitch, and had the effect of taking 10 miles per hour off a fastball.
It is bad enough (from the pitcher’s point of view; let’s take that point of view because no one else does) that the place pitchers throw from has been shoved so far back. But look, too, at what they are throwing at, and what they are throwing. Consider what has happened to the strike zone and the ball.
Baseball knows on which side its bread is buttered—the side of offense. That is the people’s choice. As soon as snap-wrist and overhand pitching were permitted, hitting declined. So, in the fullness of time (and not much time was wasted), the ball was “juiced.” By 1894 the league ERA was a giddy 5.32. But the ball was still not very lively, and not many balls were used in any game, so they lost a lot of life along the way to the ninth inning.
In 1872 the rules stipulated that in even innings a team captain could request replacement of an “injured” ball. Until 1886 a ball lost was not considered really lost until after players had used an allotted five minutes to try to find it, if the umpire so ordered. By 1897 a new moralism was abroad in baseball and a $5 fine could be levied on any player guilty of injuring a ball. But normal play did plenty of injuring. It was not unusual for
a game to be played with one or two or three balls. By the end of the game the ball was as resilient as a dumpling. Or a tomato. “We often played five or six innings with one ball,” Napoleon Lajoie recalled. “And after two or three innings you thought you were hitting a rotten tomato.” There is a certain amount of hitters’ self-pity in that account. Compassion should be tempered by the knowledge that Lajoie hit the tomato for .422 in 1901 and .339 over 21 seasons. Some offense was possible.
As recently as June 29, 1929, the Cubs and Reds played a full nine-inning game and used just one ball. That was an oddity. In 1919, the season that ended with the White Sox-Reds World Series, the National League used 22,095 baseballs. Then the “Black Sox” scandal broke. Just five seasons later, baseball had revived. The revival was related to the fact that, in 1925, the National League used 54,030 baseballs. More balls were being hit over fences, in part because more dirty gray balls were being taken out of play and replaced by clean white ones. Not until 1934 were both leagues required to use the same ball. However, the crucial change had occurred in 1920 when both leagues began using balls made with the same kind of yarn, from Australia. It does not seem proper, this foreign yarn inside the great American artifact, but we must not flinch from the truth. The Australian yarn was stronger than American yarn and could be wound tighter, giving the balls more bounce. During World War II the ball was not exactly dead, but it was deader than it had been immediately before or has been since. This was because war shortages forced manufacturers to use an inferior wool for the yarn wrapped around the cork center. Luckily, all wars end, and the ball bounced back. Peace was hell, for pitchers.
However, nothing lasts, not even hell. Two decades after the end of World War II the batters were again losing their 100-year war with pitchers. It is an old axiom that “good pitching will stop good hitting—and vice versa.” What good pitching does is produce a year like 1968, which in turn produces countermeasures by the people who write the rules. (The real powers behind the rule book are the people who balance baseball’s financial books.)
In 1968 the major league batting average was .237, the lowest ever. The 1968 Yankees batted .214, far worse than the .240 of the 120-loss Mets of 1962. Carl Yastrzemski led the American League with .301. The average number of runs per game (6.84) fell almost to the record low (6.77) set in 1908, when the ball was dead. Willie McCovey led the National League in RBIs with 105 and was the only man in the league to top 100. Twenty-one percent of all games were shutouts. Denny McLain became the first pitcher since Dizzy Dean in 1934 to win 30 games (McLain was 31–6). He pitched 28 complete games and had a 1.96 ERA, but he did not have the best year among major league pitchers. Neither did Juan Marichal, although he was 26–9 and pitched 30 complete games. Don Drysdale set what was wrongly thought to be one of baseball’s unassailable records by pitching 58⅔ consecutive scoreless innings, but not even that was the most remarkable performance by a pitcher in 1968.
The most remarkable pitcher was Bob Gibson. He set a National League record with a 1.12 ERA. Gibson’s Cy Young and MVP award-winning season probably was the greatest season any pitcher ever had. The astonishing thing about his 22–9 record is that he managed to lose nine times. He says he should have been 30–1, and he would have been if the Cardinals had scored even four runs in each of his starts. In those nine losses he allowed just 27 runs. He lost 1–0 twice and 2–0 once. In his 34 starts he pitched 28 complete games, including 13 shutouts. In nine other games he allowed opponents just one run. In his 34 starts he was removed six times for pinch hitters. He was never removed during an inning, from the mound—never knocked out of the box.
Numbers like these proved that something had to be done. Something was done, and it worked, immediately. In 1968 there had been six .300 hitters in all of baseball. In 1969 there were three times that many. The number of 100 RBI men rose from 3 to 14, the number of 40 or more home-run hitters rose from 1 to 7. (Frank Howard’s total of 44 in 1968 is one of baseball’s great aberrations.) What resuscitated offense was some creative fiddling with the game.
Casting about for ways to pump more pop back into offense, the owners, being good Americans, thought of a technological fix. So in 1969, during Spring Training, they experimented with a new ball. The results included ludicrously long home runs hit by pitchers and other people who had no business hitting for power, and line drives dangerous to the physical well-being of pitchers. That ball was quickly thrown away.
More seriously, after 1968 five teams moved their fences in. Center field in Philadelphia’s Connie Mack Stadium came in from 447 to 410 feet. The most serious attack on pitching supremacy, however, lay in the rule book. The 1969 solution (if such there can ever be) to the problem (if such it is) of the dominance of pitching involved shaving the mound and shrinking the strike zone. The mound was lowered by one-third, from 15 inches to 10 inches. And the strike zone became the subject of a remarkably futile episode of rule writing.
In the momentous year of 1887 (the centennial of the Constitutional Convention and the year when throwing overhand became an inalienable right of pitchers) the strike zone was defined as extending from the top of the batter’s shoulders to the bottom of his knees. That was good enough to get this great land of ours through two world wars, but in 1950 the rule makers succumbed to the fidgets and said: Henceforth the strike zone shall be from the armpits to the top of the knees. In 1963 it was redefined yet again, back to the 1887 dimensions. Then after the trauma of 1968, the “armpits to the top of the knees” strike zone was restored. Bart Giamatti said people look to games for “stable artifice,” an island of clear rules, of predictable governance in a world of flux. If that is what fans are looking for, they should not look too closely at the strike zone.
Or at the rule book. All those words on paper are fine, but the game is not played on paper, and out on the field the strike zone has wandered south. It is bad enough that the zone has been redefined promiscuously. Much more important is the fact that, as we saw in Dave Duncan’s charts, the de jure zone bears no resemblance to the de facto zone—the one the umpires are enforcing. Again, if the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is, then the strike zone is what the umpires say it is, and the strike zone today runs from the belt down to as far below the knees as the particular umpire behind the plate likes to call strikes.
Before the 1988 season the rule makers, with their touching faith in the magic of words to control the men in blue, tried to restore the sovereignty of written law. They tried to do this with a small surrender. They tried to expand the strike zone by shrinking it. They redefined the top of the zone as being at the letters on the uniforms. (They blushed and fainted dead away at the thought of desecrating the sacred rule book with the scarlet word “nipples.”) Their theory, or hope, was that umpires would bring up the top of the strike zone at least slightly if the official top of the zone was defined down, a little more to their liking. The change made not a particle of difference in umpires’ behavior.
Thorn and Holway say “the steady onslaught” of pitching is so powerful that unless it is periodically countered it will produce the extinction of the .300 hitter. The reasons, they say, are that pitchers are becoming bigger and stronger and they are replaced more often by big, strong relief pitchers. Meanwhile, hitting proficiency is limited by the human limits of reaction time and hand-eye coordination. However, bear in mind the fact that baseball has not yet suffered a really traumatic imbalance, one that could not be corrected by minor modifications of the terms of competition.
Perhaps—we shall never know—baseball came close to such a trauma in the 1950s. It had a glimpse of what could have been a really discombobulating force. In the 1950s the Orioles had a pitching prospect who became a baseball legend without ever becoming a big leaguer. Steve Dalkowski came out of a Connecticut high school with throwing mechanics that were terrible and, it turned out, impervious to all attempts to improve them. But in spite of his flaws he probably threw harder than anyone who ever pitched in the m
ajor leagues. Harder and wilder. He was never properly timed under suitable conditions. There was no mound at the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground where he was timed by a radar gun. But the consensus was that he threw approximately 115 miles per hour. Two of the hardest throwers of modern times, Nolan Ryan and Goose Gossage, were timed at 103 miles per hour at the 1985 Ail-Star Game in Minneapolis. A Dalkowski fastball once hit an umpire in the mask, breaking the mask and putting the umpire in the hospital for three days. Dalkowski with even adequate control might have been intolerable for baseball. He might have been the almost unhittable pitcher. If so, he would have been boring.
A few years ago George Plimpton wrote a whimsical novel that made a point both serious and lovely. The Curious Case of Sidd Finch was the story of a mystic whose Buddhist discipline, learned in Tibet, enabled him, when his concentration was undisturbed, to throw a ball 160 miles per hour with perfect control. The Mets prepared a catcher by having him catch balls dropped from the Goodyear blimp. (A ball dropped from 1,000 feet reaches the ground traveling 170 miles per hour.) Plimpton’s novel is a playful exploration of this truth: All sport, but especially baseball, depends on a fragile equilibrium. The equilibrium depends on both a high level of performance by many participants and on the maintenance of imperfection. Plimpton has Davey Johnson, Finch’s manager on the Mets, say, “What he does doesn’t really belong in baseball.” True. Anything like it would ruin the game.
Men at Work Page 16