The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball Blog

Because of a prior outside commitment, my posting over the next month is going to be much less frequent than it was, unfortunately.

Chris Pelekoudas makes a couple of appearances in the book, as an umpire trying to enforce the spitball and foreign substance rules through his career even when baseball’s offices didn’t back him. His confrontation with Phil Regan provides a great example of how the dynamics of these confrontations worked. In 1968, the umpires were supposed to call suspect pitches balls even if they didn’t find anything on the ball.

So in the first game of a Cubs-Reds doubleheader on Auguest 18th, Pelekoudas went out to the mound after the first greaseball…

“I said to him, ‘Phil, I’m not going to search you. I just want you to know that any time you throw one it’s going to be a ball.’
Leo Durocher came out and threatened to forfeit the ballgame. He said we didn’t have evidence. He never once denied that Regan was throwing them. He merely said to show him the evidence.”

(Dick Young, 8/25/1968)

I’m not as convinced as Pelekoudas was that Durocher was admitting through not denying, since Durocher may well have wanted to avoid questioning Pelekoudas’ judgement of pitches, but okay.

Another umpire, Shag Crawford (what a name) gave Regan the once over, found something greasy, and ended up wiping Regan off with a towel.

Pelekoudas invoked the rule to call balls repeatedly and at one point called Pete Rose back after Rose made an out: Pelekoudas “called it a no-play and Rose was given another swing. He singled.”

Mack Jones got out of a fly to center as well, the pitch ruled a ball.

Check out the boxscore and play-by-play, courtesy of Retrosheet and see what happened to the game, though — once Regan comes into the game in the 7th, there are two ejections immediately, and then Regan’s catcher is ejected after complaining about the Rose second chance, and then Rose is ejected after being caught stealing at second. Four ejections in two innings.

So in that game, the umpire used a rule as he was intended to use it and much more aggressively than perhaps had been anticipated, and one of his crew found something on Regan’s person that was greasy (this is “wiped the inside of his cap” in some accounts, but that they wiped his face and neck in others). What’d the league do?

They met with the pitcher, his manager, and the Cubs general manager.

“Phil told me he did not have any Vaseline or other lubricant on his sweatband,” said Giles later, “and I believe him. Chris Pelekoudas suspected he did have a lubricant of some kind, but told me his judgement of an illegal pitch was based almost entirely on the action of the ball in flight.”

Nothing happened to Regan.

It’s no wonder that by and large umpires didn’t want to even try to enforce ball-doctoring rules, given the support they got.

There’s another great example of this in Gaylord Perry’s career… which I’ll get to in due time.

Does this count? joser pointed me to what may, or may not, count as a hidden ball trick. In the June 8th Boston at Arizona game:

Arizona 3B Alberto Callaspo fell victim to a hidden-ball trick in the third. After beating a throw to second base, Callaspo stood to dust himself off, pulling his left hand off the bag. Lugo, standing behind him with the ball in his glove, made the tag. “Lugo just kind of slipped behind him,” Beckett said. “I was actually back there trying to get him to throw me the ball. I’m glad he didn’t throw me the ball.”

Mike Lowell, the best active player at the trick, said it shouldn’t count:

“That’s not a real hidden-ball trick,” Lowell said yesterday , “although I’m sure the stats say it is.”

And that’s an interesting distinction. If someone slides through second while the fielder keeps the tag on for the out, that wouldn’t be considered a hidden ball trick. The hidden ball trick’s usually defined as happening when the play is well over and requiring some amount of deception, but does time or manner matter? Lugo waited, took advantage of the runner not paying attention, and got the out. It may not have been quite as sweet as some of Lowell’s plays, but it works.

More Phil Regan-related goodness. In the 6/29/1968 Sporting News (p16), Braves manager Luman Harris vents about the strange enforcement of new anti-spitball rules that year.

Harris and the Braves claimed that Regan got a substance of some kind from his forehead and put it on the ball.
“He did it every pitch,” said Harris.
But I don’t blame Regan, I don’t blame (Leo) Durocher and I don’t blame the umpires. What he did is legal, the way the rule is today.
“Why, you can set a bucket of water next to the mound and stick your hand in it all day just as long as you don’t go to your mouth.”

Harris is obviously exaggerating there, but let it go, as Harris talks about the new rule that going to the mouth while on the mound is an automatic ball.

“They’re enforcing that, all right,” said Harris. “But you can put stuff in your hair, on your cap or uniform. I know what these guys are using - and where they get it. It comes in a tube. But what’s the use of saying anything?”

The interesting thing is that Harris is entirely right: pitchers like Gaylord Perry and Phil Regan, seeing the rules change to focus enforcement on the mouth, figured out how they could continue to throw their “hard slider” and get away with it.

I found writing the book that there were a lot of little hints like this that rewarded more research, or confirmed other suspicions. Sometimes, like here, I could track the rest of Regan’s hijinks until Harris’ remarks fit into a larger puzzle, and sometimes, like with Tommy John, I ended up with nothing substantial enough to put in the book.

The Cheater’s Guide got a nice write-up in the new Sports Illustrated, including a nice note on the “rainbow play” post which now includes a sweet comment by their coach! Wooo!

In the book, I talk about Phil Regan (and particularly his August 18th, 1968 start where umpire Chris Pelekoudas went after him all game) and Jack Hamilton, who was the highest-profile suspected spitballer of the time, but what I thought was particularly interesting was how fate put them together. Before the 1966 season, Phil Regan was traded to the Dodgers from Detroit, and I found a September 3rd, 1966 article (Sportiing News, p3) about his success with the Dodgers which included this:

Some Call It Spitter
Some of the leading hitters in the National League say it’s not a slider, but a spitter, and the best in the business at that.
Regan, always modest, made this rebuttal.
“Not me, my roomie at Syracuse last year, Jack Hamilton, has the best one.”

Regan, like many spit-ballers, cultivated the doubt in hitters’ minds to his best advantage.

Regan doesn’t mind if some of the batters mistake his super slider, which breaks about 15 or 16 inches, for a spitter.
“In fact,” he explained with a grin, “I think it helps if they’re looking for it.”

Tom (”aka the Baseball Zealot“) writes

Hi Derek,

I have a question for your site.

Last week I attended the Big Ten Baseball Tournament. Had a great time even though my Illini were knocked out after 3 games.

Anyway, I noticed that during Penn State games, I noticed something whenever the opposing team was up. Right after the PSU pitcher pitched the ball, a fan in the Penn State section would emit a short, loud, high-pitched whistle. The sound carried VERY well and it was obvious to me that this person was trying to distract the batter and throw off his timing.

Every two or three pitches, this continued throughout the whole tournament. It was rather annoying and I half hoped the umpire would do something about it. I understand the role of the fan is to cheer and hoot and yes, for some fans, boo and heckle. However, it was obvious this unfortunate person was timing their whistle in order to distract the batter (after a while, these whistles started coming during opposing pitchers’ windups).

My question is: Could the umpire crew have done something about this or is this simply out of the realm of their jurisdiction?

The Penn State fans were, for the most part, a great crowd but I wish that person had stayed home.

Love your site,

Tom aka The Baseball Zealot

In MLB, they certainly do. Under Rule 9.01(a)

The league president shall appoint one or more umpires to officiate at each league championship game. The umpires shall be responsible for the conduct of the game in accordance with these official rules and for maintaining discipline and order on the playing field during the game.

and as a matter of tradition, the umpires have broad discretion to throw out spectators who affect the play of the game. Technically it doesn’t cross the line into fan interference as defined in the rules, but umpires can and have historically been able to have fans re-seated or ejected.

There’s no rule I can find that directly and clearly gives umpires the authority, but it’s pretty well implied in 3.18:

The home team shall provide police protection sufficient to preserve order. If a person, or persons, enter the playing field during a game and interfere in any way with the play, the visiting team may refuse to play until the field is cleared.

Technically, no, they’re not entering the playing field. But that “order” part… is it an inherent power?

Take the Mets fan ejected and arrested for trying to blind players. While a whistle’s not as potentially harmful - it’s unlikely a player would suffer deafness as they might blindness - if it was really affecting the play of the game, and stadium personnel didn’t act, an umpire can ask them to, and they will, as in the Mets case.

On the flip side, though, heckling and noisemaking’s a long-tolerated part of the game. The Oakland A’s have drummers, Tampa’s got that one heckler with the loudest voice in Florida, and so on, and generally speaking, you’ll get tossed for annoying people with expensive tickets long before the umpire has to raise an eyebrow.

Back to the question: is there a rule that allows umpires to toss a fan? I can’t speak for college baseball, but at the MLB level there is not, but the umpires can get that done without the express rule. I mean, technically, you can stretch and say that in distracting a pitcher in their delivery the fan’s putting the batter at risk of getting hit, and if it’s a safety issue… well, obviously the ump could act. But I don’t think it’s ever argued that an ump can toss fans if they decide it’s necessary.

On a related note, I wanted to quote this, from an interview with Tom Swodoba as a Frontier League ump, because it cracks me up:

Have you ever ejected a fan? How about ballpark staff?

I have never ejected a fan from a Frontier League game. I have ejected a public address announcer for announcing over the system that “We really got hosed on that call.”.

Hey, cool news - the Cheater’s Guide to Baseball segment I did on NPR’s Day-to-Day, reading from the hidden ball trick chapter and talking about other good stuff, is going to be included on an NPR best-of baseball CD. Woo-hoo! If you missed it, here’s a link to the segment. Makes me want to grin.

In Saturday’s Red Sox-Yankees game, Mike Lowell made that’s pretty clearly a much more egregious plan on the basepaths. From the recap on ESPN:

A night after Lowell took a pitch off his left wrist — one of five hit batsman in the game — he had three hits and four RBIs. He was also involved in a little basepath payback in the fourth when he slammed his right shoulder — and a little bit of his elbow — into Cano in an attempt to break up a double play.

Cano bounced the ball to first as he fell to the dirt, just getting Varitek at first.

“I never had a problem with him before,” Cano said. “Today he threw his elbow.”

But Torre said it was a clean play. Lowell, who spent his first four professional seasons in the Yankees organization, insisted he meant no harm.

“They taught me how to do it,” he said.

If you see the highlight, it’s a little remarkable that Cano made the play at all.

The interesting thing for me is that no matter how you want to interpret the rules, in terms of actual interference in a play on the field, Lowell’s action is far more direct and disruptive than what Alex did… but Lowell doesn’t face the same kind of scrutiny and discussion that Alex’s action did. Lowell’s play is even noted as being, essentially, hard but clean.

Why? Is it because Lowell doesn’t carry Alex’s reputation? Because breaking up a double play is acceptable? Or is it as simple as Cano somehow making the throw to get the out at first?

Frank Jordan wrote:

I have an addendum for the Gaylord Perry section. I once went to a Mariner game and sat in row 1 behind the Mariners bullpen at the Kingdome. Gaylord Perry was pitching that day and was warming up before the game right in front of us. When he got done warming up he sat down in front of us to cool down for a moment before leaving to head into the clubhouse. Left in front of us were two players. I can’t remember their names ( I was 12) but I believe one of them was Terry “Bud” Bulling, and the other was a relief pitcher.

I turned to my friend after Perry left and said, “Man, Perry STINKS.” (His smell, not his performance.)

The catcher turned to me and said, “Oh, so you now know his secret.”

“His secret? How do you mean?”

““Gaylord coats his entire body with Ben-Gay before the game, and when he sweats during the game his entire uniform becomes a big greaseball. He can touch any part of his uniform to throw a greaseball. The umpires can check him all they want, but Ben-Gay isn’t illegal and there’s nothing they can do about it.”

This was in the days before the odorless Sportscreme. It would be even easier to pull off today. (Ben-Gaylord?)

I didn’t encounter anything like this while doing book research, and I did a ton of Gaylord Perry reading writing that part of the book. But I don’t find this particularly implausible - Perry freely admits that he was willing to try anything, no matter how outlandish, in his pursuit of excellence through ball-doctoring.

And even if the catcher was putting him on, it’s still funny.