The New Ballgame: Understanding Baseball Statistics for the Casual Fan by Glenn Guzzo Read Free Book Online

missed out on much of the top talent. The AL's dismal All-Star Game record from 1951 to 1982 drives home the
point: The AL lost 29 of 36 All-Star Games, reversing its previous dominance.

Spitters, Splitters and Sliders
    The types of pitches batters have had to face in different eras has caused further inconsistencies in pitching and hitting statistics.
    The spitball confounded hitters before WWII. At least five pitchers who
relied on the spitball are in the Hall of Fame (Jack Chesbro, Ed Walsh, Stan
Coveleski, Red Faber and Burleigh Grimes). Chesbro has the twentieth century record for wins in a season, 41, and Walsh once won 40. But the sloppy
spitball was both unsanitary and dangerous because the tobacco-juiced lubricant darkened the ball in the time before lighted fields.
    Ray Chapman didn't see one of those darkened baseballs in time. In the
heat of a pennant race, the talented and popular Cleveland shortstop was hit
in the head with a pitch from Carl Mays on August 17, 1920, and became the
only player killed during a major league game. The Washington Star carried
this remarkable account:
    So terrific was the blow that the report of impact caused spectators to think the ball had struck his bat. Mays... acting under
this impression, fielded the ball which rebounded halfway to
the pitcher's box, and threw it to first base to retire Chapman.

    A spitball figured in the most famous passed ball in history-the one that
got away from Dodger catcher Mickey Owen in Game 4 of the 1941
World Series. The low pitch that struck out the Yankees' Tommy Henrich,
with two outs in the ninth inning and Brooklyn leading, would have tied
the Series at two games each. Instead, Henrich reached first after the ball
eluded Owen and the Yankees went on to score four runs that inning, win
the game and take a commanding 3-1 Series lead.
    That was the only passed ball Owen committed all season. He has been
remembered ever since for it. Almost forgotten was the pitcher, Hugh
Casey. Years later, he admitted the pitch had been a spitball.
    By most accounts, Mays was as nasty in disposition as his pitches. Although the pitch that killed Chapman was not believed to be a spitball (the
submarine-style throwing Mays said it was a rising fastball), Chapman's
death and the spitball's contribution to darkened baseballs accelerated the
campaign to ban it. In 1921, only seventeen pitchers, whose livelihood depended on the pitch, were allowed to continue throwing it. Other pitchers
have since been accused of throwing spitballs, and pitchers have continued
to find other ways of doctoring baseballs to make sharper and less familiar movement. Officially, the last legal spitball was thrown in 1934, Burleigh
Grimes' final season.

    Chapman's death had another consequence: In 1921, umpires were instructed to replace balls more often. Having whiter, less lopsided balls to hit
contributed to bigger offense in the Lively Ball era, too.
    In the 1980s, pitchers like Bruce Sutter, Jack Morris and Mike Scott
perfected the split-finger fastball, which imitated the spitball's sudden sinking
action. That pitch got Sutter into the Hall of Fame, allowed Morris to become
the winningest pitcher of the 1980s, and transformed Scott from a pedestrian
pitcher to one of the most effective in the game.
    In his first six seasons, Scott had a 29-44 win-loss record, gave up more
hits than innings pitched, struck out fewer than four-and-a-half batters per
nine innings, and had an ERA well above 4.00. In his next five seasons, Scott
was 86-47, was one of baseball's least hittable pitchers, struck out about eight
batters per nine innings, and had an ERA below 3.00. In 1986, Scott led the
NL with a 2.22 ERA and 306 strikeouts.
    Shortly after the spitball disappeared, along came the slider, another devastating and deceptive pitch that looks like a fastball but acts like a sharp curve,
breaking late just as it crosses the plate. In The Neyer/James Guide to