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March 20, 2014NCAA tourney, Indians pitching rotation and more with TD – WFNY Podcast – 2014-03-20
March 20, 2014“C’mon, loser.”
The pitcher was accustomed to this particular moniker. Each of the half-dozen pharmacy technicians at the hospital addressed the others the same way. They were all in their twenties, at an age when most of their friends had graduated from college and were embarking on a ‘real’ career. These guys were smart, and had a decent work ethic, but their college careers had bogged down for various personal reasons. None of them were truly rudderless- they were all working on plans to graduate and move on- but a certain amount of self-loathing crept into some derisive humor, aimed at the others.
The pitch was familiar to the hitter. It had some speed, and broke sharply down and away. It was never really a strike, but it arrived too quickly to lay off. The hitter’s anticipatory bat waving transitioned to a lunge, and a horrible swing. Even if he’d made contact, it would have only been a weak foul ball.
From the ‘mound’ came a smile and an exclamation: “…The Red …Dart.”
The evolution of pitching is fascinating. Do yourself a favor and read this, which was written by Rob Neyer and Bill James. See pages 3 through 10. This will take you from 1870 up until about ten years ago.
When baseball began in the 19th century, the purpose of the pitcher was to allow the hitter to put the ball in play. There were restrictions on speed and on arm motion (underhanded, with a rigid wrist and elbow). Curve balls were in their experimental phase- some scientists actually maintained they were an impossibility. However, ball players were seeing curve balls with their own eyes. The actual baseball used in a game also tended to become lopsided, which lent itself to curving action.
By the late 1880s, all pitchers were throwing overhand- and they still delivered pitches with a running start. Gone was all pretense of not throwing hard. And various curving pitches became more widespread.
The next pitch was delivered with a sidearm motion. It spun on a vertical axis, and was supposed to break upwards. If it did, it was an “out” pitch. If it did not, it just floated to the plate, looking like a ball on a tee to the hitter.
This one lived up to its name, The Riser. The swinging strike drew the batter into a violent spin, away from the plate. It ended with his arms, face and chest wide open to the deep blue sky. He wanted all of that pitch.
The pitcher snorted a prolonged chuckle.
1893 was when Baseball adopted the sixty-foot, six-inch distance from the pitcher to home plate, tethering him to what would eventually become the pitching rubber. This extra distance better enabled hitters to have their way what they were swinging at. The fastballs, changeups, and occasional curveballs offered by the pitchers of that time were proving inadequate, with the added distance.
From 1910 to 1919, baseball was all about ‘small ball.’ Known today as the ‘dead ball era’, the focus then was almost solely on bunting, stolen bases, and the hit-and-run.
Babe Ruth revolutionized the game, showing how the home run can trump the mere moving of runners. The game began to become much less of a chess match.
That is, on the part of the hitters, at least. With pitchers, the opposite was occurring. By 1920, pitching was becoming much more complex.
With the count 0-2, the pitcher figured he might get the batter to chase something for the whiff. He uncorked his best curveball, The Roundhouse, and then the Sweeping Scroogie. These were essentially the same pitch, only one was the exact opposite of the other.
It just depended on what side of the ball the holes were on.
The scene was set for an explosion in experimentation in pitching. In the ten years prior to 1903 or so, rumors among ball clubs revolved around pitchers in other parts of the country. What was that guy throwing? How was he making it break? Pitchers were trying various kinds of breaking balls, thrown at various speeds. The authors of the book linked above maintain that generally speaking, pitchers of the 1890s were throwing much of what we see in baseball today (this included Cy Young, of the Cleveland Spiders).
Pitchers began to go overboard by the end of the ‘teens. They weren’t bashful about spitting on the ball, rubbing foreign substances into it, scoring it, scraping it, and so on. They were getting such great action on the ball that the plain old breaking ball was seldom used any more.
The inevitable ban of the spitball would bring the art of pitching back to the forefront.
It is on the cusp of that watershed moment that we find our 1920 World Champion Cleveland Indians. We have looked at that season from a couple different angles in recent weeks. Before we move on through the Roaring Twenties, toward the Great Depression and into World War II, we thought it would be fun to focus on the top pitchers of that first championship baseball season in Cleveland.
Jim Bagby would be considered, in today’s parlance, the Indians’ ace. He pitched in 48 of the team’s 154 total games- nearly one third. He started 38 games in going 31-12 with a 2.89 ERA on the season. Bagby’s main pitch was a curve that was said to break about a foot. Known as a “fadeaway,” he discovered the pitch while fooling around playing catch. The pitch was said to be a copy of the top pitch of Christy Mathewson. Bagby’s son, Jim Bagby Jr., later pitched with the Tribe, and featured the pitch, as well.
Stan Coveleski was a coal miner from Pennsylvania who made it big- with the spitball. He was one of several pitchers who were ‘grandfathered’- he was allowed to throw it even after the ban. Coveleski, a Hall of Famer, was able to control the movement of his spitter, making it break in various directions. He later stated he used alum to keep from getting a dry mouth. He’d go to his mouth before every single pitch, to keep the hitter guessing. Besides the spitball, Coveleski also threw the standard curve, fastball, and ‘slow ball’ (changeup). In 1920, he pitched in 41 games, starting 38 and winning 24.
Rick “Slim” Caldwell had been signed by manager Tris Speaker with a contract that famously mandated he drink after every game he pitched, in hopes he’d get it out of his system by his next start. Slim’s drinking problem got him kicked off his previous teams. The scheduled drinking regimen worked in 1920, when Caldwell pitched in 34 games, starting all but one. He won 20. He was also ‘grandfathered’ with the spitball, and threw a knuckleball as well.
Guy Morton had one of the top fastballs in baseball. One reference compares him favorably to Walter Johnson. His curve had a sharp break, and he was known to experiment with his motion and with various pitches during games, when the feeling hit him. Morton went 8-6 in 1920.
There is one other pitcher whom we’d like to mention from that 1920 team. George Uhle (“yoo-lee”) had been a star in the sandlot leagues in Cleveland (the town’s sandlot teams were often sponsored and staffed by local factories, and many professional ballplayers hailed from those leagues). Uhle’s stats were not terrific in 1920, but he would eventually become a standout pitcher for his hometown Indians. He is actually credited by some baseball historians for inventing the slider.
The hitter hadn’t chased the waste pitches. But as the pitcher knew, it was not macho to stand there and not swing for very long. The hitter was staring at the grass in concentration, tapping imaginary mud off the bottoms of his shoes with the plastic yellow bat. As a girl in those 1980s might’ve said, “as if.”
“Ya Doooooooooosh.” Now it was the pitcher who was chirping. Both he and the hitter knew what was coming next. A pitch that was so unhittable that he announced it every time he was about to throw it.
“The Buhlooooooo Bayyoooooooo.” While the aim indeed was to blow it by the hitter, it was an unpredictable pitch. The grip featured directing the solid half of the ball directly at the target. Thrown at maximum speed, it had the effect of a fluttering knuckleball. Only, the velocity was greater than any other pitch. The intent of the thrower was to get it to the plate fast enough that it didn’t have enough time to dance too far away.
The pitcher had delivered a strike, and he smiled at the way the batter had tied himself into a pretzel trying to whack it.
The batter’s aloof manner belied his irritation. “Nice pitch! Where did you learn that one?” Of course,the batter had taught that pitch to the entire whiffle ball crew.
“Sit down. Loser.”
****
Find all of Greg’s work at WFNY here. Follow him on Twitter.
Sources used include: The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers and Pitches, Neyer and James; The Glory of Their Times, Lawrence S Ritter; The Cleveland Indians Encyclopedia, Russell Schneider; Baseball-Reference.com and Wikipedia.
2 Comments
Surprised that Ty Cobb’s complaints about the slider didn’t make it into this article. Might be in the next one.
I didn’t know about that- would love to read about it. Can you point me in the direction for a source to check out? Appreciate it.