The baseball season is only two months old, and we already have two cases of pitchers getting caught trying to doctor baseballs. Will Smith of the Milwaukee Brewers and Brian Matusz of the Baltimore Orioles received eight-game suspensions after both were caught with foreign substances on their arm. It’s not like any of this should come as a shock, either. Baseball has a long and storied history of pitchers applying anything they can to the ball to gain an advantage. Sometimes they didn’t even try to hide it. Gaylord Perry released a book titled Me and the Spitter smack in the middle of his 21-year career. This is nothing new.
The two early season suspensions, in the wake of the NFL’s own ball-doctoring controversy, has led to a fair amount of hand-wringing, though. Some have been advocating for relaxing the rules about foreign substances, pointing out that anything that helps a pitcher maintain control over a projectile screaming toward another human at speeds in excess of 95 mph is probably a good thing. Others, the self-elected Custodians of Baseball, are shouting “What are we going to do? How do we maintain the integrity of our game?” toward the heavens in the middle of a driving rainstorm, like the heartbroken members of an R&B group in a music video from the mid-1990s.
And so, with that in mind, I’d like to throw my own potential solution out there: I think we should let pitchers do whatever they want to the baseball.
Let me be clearer, and borrow from one of the modern eras greatest philosophers to do so: You may think you heard me just say, “I think pitchers should be allowed to do a lot more to the baseball.” What I said was, “I think we should let pitchers do whatever they want to the baseball.” Here is an incomplete list of things I would be okay with pitchers using:
- Adhesives
- Lubricants
- Whatever comes between adhesives and lubricates
- Sandpaper
- Battery-powered power tools (no extension cords on the field, I’m not a lunatic)
- Their spit
- Someone else’s spit
- Kitchen utensils
- Crud
- Schmutz
- Goo
- Space goo (non-living)
- Other things
My main argument in favor of this is simple. I just think it would be fun and pretty hilarious, and sports, as a game, can always use more fun and hilarity. I’m not even opposed to a pitcher carrying a whole dang toolbox full of ointments, glues, and instruments out to the mound with him. Or dunking the entire ball into a bucket labeled “Pitching Goop.” Whatever will make the ball do the weirdest, goofiest thing is a-ok with me. I’m talking Bugs-Bunny-getting-three-swinging-strikes-with-one-pitch stuff. Loopty loops and whatnot. All of it. And, in the interest of fairness, let’s let the batters cork their bats, too. Who cares, really? It’s just equipment. Any rules about what is or isn’t allowed are arbitrary to begin with. As long as there’s no major physical risk to the health of the players (so maybe still no spring-loaded adamantium bats), I say let’s get crazy.
Now, I hear you. You’re saying, “But doesn’t that just give players legal justification to cheat?” And my counter to that is, “… Does it?” Something is only cheating if it breaks a rule, written or otherwise. If the players and owners agree to put the simple, clear sentence “Pitchers are allowed to monkey around with the baseball” into the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, then bingo bango, problem solved.
And if you’re one of those baseball traditionalists who argues that any rule change to the national pastime is tantamount to blasphemy, allow me to make this point: The spitball wasn’t always illegal. It wasn’t officially banned until the 1920 season, and it even then the league grandfathered in 17 spitballers who were allowed to keep throwing it until they retired. The last legal spitballer, Burleigh Grimes, hung on all the way until 1934. Another grandfathered-in spitballer named Urban Shocker lasted until 1928. Baseball was far from perfect in the 1920s (the Black Sox scandal was still fresh in everyone’s minds, and integration was still 20 years away), and today’s game does certainly have its advantages, but dudes named Burleigh Grimes and Urban Shocker getting special permission to throw gunked-up baseball was definitely a point in the era’s favor.
Beyond making things fun and hilarious, which is and always will be my primary sports objective, there’s a second argument in favor of letting pitchers junk up the baseball, too: protecting their increasingly fragile arms. Here’s the case for the spitter, presented as straightforward as you’ll ever see.
It was a great pitch and one of the easiest to throw. There was nothing dangerous about it. Mostly, the ball dipped and did tricks, from a natural delivery. It was nothing like this screwball they have to throw today, with a twisted elbow and a tricky snapping of the wrists. No wonder today’s pitchers can’t go on as long.
Wanna know the craziest part? That quote comes from former commissioner Ford Frick, speaking to reporters back in 1955, almost 20 years before Tommy John went in for the elbow surgery that would eventually bear his name, and 50 to 60 years before every fan in America became terrified of it when their young stud pitching prospect reached for his elbow after throwing a slider. (Also discussed at the time: Instituting a 20-second clock on pitchers to help speed up the game, “a matter of considerable discussion in recent years with many games dragging past the two-hour mark.” The two-hour mark.) That’s not to say a healthy coating of slime is the surefire antidote to arm injuries. Neither Ford Frick or I are medical doctors. But if you can make a baseball bend and dip two ways, and one of the ways requires arm action that increases the odds of your tendons fraying and coming apart like old shoelaces, then, I mean, is putting some schmutz on the ball really that bad?
I don’t think it is. I think we owe it to ourselves to make it all legal. For comedy AND for safety. It’s a win-win. Let’s start putting goo on those baseballs.
