4.00: Game Preliminaries
As per 4.01 (c), it was originally the challenging team’s duty to provide the game ball. If, say, the Pittsburgh Pirates were to challenge the Philadelphia Phillies for bragging rights in the State of Pennsylvania, the rules in 1858 would have bade the Pirates to spring for the sphere regardless of where the game was played.
When teams began to meet for more than a single contest, the policy was for the visiting nine to furnish the balls if a series of games was played, and the home side to do so if the match called for only one game. In either case, at the close of each game the ball became the property of the victorious club. Even after the job of supplying the balls fell to the home team, this custom was retained. In 1887, when the National League and American Association first agreed to be governed by the same rules, both circuits stipulated that the last ball in play belonged to the winning team, and custom further dictated that the fielder who registered the last out fell heir to the ball. Challenges to this custom were few prior to 2004, when the ball that Boston first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz caught to register the final out in the World Series and thereupon end the Red Sox’ eighty-six-year championship drought became a highly coveted trophy. Twelve years later, the ball that first baseman Anthony Rizzo caught to end the Cubs’ 108-year championship drought was equally treasured.
Rule 4.01 (d) has come a long way. As late as 1887, the home team in both major leagues had to furnish the umpire with just two new balls; to be given him prior to a game and enclosed in a paper box that was secured with a seal of the secretary of either the National League or American Association. Upon receiving the sealed boxes, the umpire would call “Play” and then break open both of them in the presence of the two rival team captains. If either of the two game balls was lost or damaged to an extent that it could no longer be used, the home team was required to replace it with another new ball so that an umpire would always have an extra ball on his person. Balls were so reluctantly replaced for good reason; they were handmade and much more expensive than they are now. Consequently, prior to 1887, teams would often try to introduce worn balls into the game that had previously been used for batting or infield practice.
In the early years of professional play, the home team had to furnish the umpire with just one new ball and there was no rule that it had to be given in a sealed box. Frugal teams would remove a new ball from play after it had been served up to the required leadoff batter of the game and substitute a used ball. If the leadoff batter was luckless enough to make out on the first pitch, the new ball would only be in play for that one at-bat. This practice encouraged pitchers on the clubs that utilized it to lay the first pitch in there, hoping to retire the leadoff batter as speedily as possible and so preserve the team’s new ball. Oftentimes the so-called “new” ball would be used in this manner for several games before an opponent or an umpire refused to accept it as new any longer.
Until fairly deep into the twentieth century, spectators were expected—and in some parks mandated—to return all balls hit into the stands, whether fair or foul, which were often put back into play. As late as the 1930s in some major-league parks, any fan that attempted to keep a ball he snared invited a struggle with the ballpark security force for possession of it.
In 1916, Cubs owner Charles Weeghman brought an end to the warfare in Wrigley Field (then called Weeghman Park) between park policemen and fans seeking souvenir balls when he opted to cede all balls hit into the stands. But other teams were loath to be so generous. In 1923, a Phillies fan, eleven-year-old Robert Cotter, was arrested and housed for several hours in the slammer for refusing to relinquish a ball hit into the Baker Bowl bleachers during a Phils game. Fourteen years later, ushers assaulted a New York fan when he tried to retrieve a foul ball that had become lodged in the home-plate screen at Yankee Stadium. His suit against the Yankees in 1937, which the club ultimately settled for $7,500, resulted in an unofficial truce between fans and major league teams on the issue.
Likewise, balls hit out of the park were customarily returned to the playing field—at least until the tail end of the nineteenth century. Most teams stationed guards and, sometimes, even substitute players outside the park to wrestle with passersby for balls fouled out of its confines and home runs that cleared the outfield barriers.
Prior to 1886, an umpire was required to wait five minutes before declaring a ball hit out of the playing field lost and putting a new ball in play. Even after 1886, teams continued to chase down balls hit out of the park and return them to play (depending on their condition). Whether a ball was still playable was often the subject of a furious debate. In a Union Association game between the Washington Nationals and St. Louis Maroons at St. Louis on October 11, 1884, St. Louis won by forfeit when Washington refused to continue after arguing in vain that a ball fouled out of the park in the fourth inning by Maroons pitcher Henry Boyle was too lopsided to be kept in play by the time it was returned.
Some four years later, American Association umpire Herman Doscher levied more than $300 in fines during a dispute midway through a game on July 6, 1888, between Cincinnati and Philadelphia. Doscher contended that a ball knocked over the outfield fence was useless when it came back covered with mud, and threw it out of play, overriding the protests of Athletics pitcher Gus Weyhing. After Doscher broke out a new ball, A’s center fielder Curt Welch snatched it and heaved it out of the Cincinnati park, prompting Doscher to tender his resignation after the game and aver that “he would not again pass through such a scene.” Under prodding, he nonetheless finished out the season before quitting for good. By 1890, Doscher had succumbed to the itch to get back into the game and umpired again in the American Association, but when he quit this time after facing the same magnitude of player belligerence, it really was for keeps.
Rarely was a ball taken out of play in the nineteenth century or, for that matter, in the early part of the twentieth century merely because it was heavily stained by grass or mud or tobacco juice or any combination thereof. No one worried whether the ball remained white and easily visible, only that it remained reasonably round and was not bursting at the seams.
By the early 1920s, however, umpires were encouraged to remove balls that were discolored or difficult for players to see. The one incident that more than any other forced both major leagues to stop economizing on the price of balls occurred at the Polo Grounds on August 16, 1920. That afternoon the New York Yankees entertained the first-place Cleveland Indians on the home site they shared at the time with the New York Giants. Pitching for the Yankees was Carl Mays, who delivered the ball with an underhand sweep that was a challenge for batters to follow even when visibility was good, and conditions that afternoon were execrable. By the top of the fifth inning, when shortstop Ray Chapman led off for the Indians, a light drizzle was falling. The ball Mays held was damp and mudstained. Down he dipped and swung his arm. His submarine delivery shot out of bleachers in the deep background of the Polo Grounds.
The following day, the Cleveland Press reported, “Mays tossed an inshoot that seemed to hypnotize Chapman, or else he miscalculated it and believed the ball would sail by. Anyhow, it struck him on the temple, fracturing his skull, and paralyzing the nerve chords, making it impossible for him to talk.”
After the beaning, Chapman underwent a delicate brain operation that evening and then lingered for several hours before passing away during the night. Mays was at first accused of deliberately throwing at Chapman, and there was a push—particularly in Cleveland—to charge him with manslaughter before he was exonerated of any wrongdoing. But in any event, Chapman’s death, the only confirmed fatality resulting directly from an injury suffered in a major-league game, hastened long-overdue legislation to remove balls from play as soon as they become scuffed or discolored.
Balls were taken out of play long before the Chapman incident, however, if they were severely damaged. In 1882, the National League introduced a rule to allow an umpire, at the request of either team captain, to call for a new ball at the end of any completed inning if the old ball was badly ripped to expose its yarn or otherwise cut or misshapen. The American Association adopted the same rule, but authorized an umpire to replace a ball even if neither captain appealed to him. A year later, the NL permitted an umpire to replace a ball “at once” if in his judgment it was no longer fit for play, but the AA continued to direct its umpires to wait for the close of an inning until the two adopted the same rule book in 1887. Seldom, though, was a ball declared unfit for play unless it was clearly damaged. Typical of the time was a National League game between the Philadelphia Quakers (now the NL’s Phillies) and Cleveland Blues on September 13, 1883. Played at Cleveland’s Recreation Park after a heavy rain, the contest pitted Philadelphia’s John Coleman against Hugh “One Arm” Daily of the Blues. Coleman, loser in 1883 of a major-league record 48 games, was virtually unhittable that afternoon, but Daily was literally unhittable. Despite a boyhood accident that deprived him of his left forearm and obliged him to play with a pad attached to the stump of his amputated limb as an aid to fielding his position, Daily set the Phils down without a safety in a 1–0 win. Phillies followers met his hitless gem with contempt, though. One account of the game said the rain had rendered the field in a “wretchedly soggy condition and this soon made the ball so mushy it was impossible to hit if effectively.”
No umpire in 1883 would have considered replacing the ball Daily hurled in his no-hitter solely because it was waterlogged. In fact, if a ball was not lost or visibly damaged, it could remain in play for the entire game. On August 4, 1908, the St. Louis Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers played a full nine innings at Brooklyn’s Washington Park III using just one ball. That is not to say this was the last game of its kind, only that there was a documented instance of one as late as 1908. The contest lasted an hour and 25 minutes, with Brooklyn winning, 3–0.
Some historians have mistakenly attributed Ray Chapman’s fatal beaning partly to the fact that pitchers in 1920 could still legally throw spitballs and also apply almost any foreign substance imaginable to a ball, in addition to hurling scuffed and discolored balls. But actually, the rule abolishing the spitball, the shine ball, the emery ball, the licorice ball, and all other deliveries that licensed a hurler to soil, deface, or in any way mar the texture of a ball was instituted on February 9, 1920, some six months before Chapman was beaned. A “grandfather clause” provision allowed each team to designate a maximum of two spitball pitchers for the 1920 season at least ten days prior to April 14, 1920, or the opening day of the campaign, and stated that thereafter none would be allowed. Mays was not among the seventeen grandfathered pitchers.
Though the spitball had ostensibly been banned by the time of the Chapman incident, there were several spitball pitchers still legally plying their trade. Most were hurlers who relied so heavily on the spitball that depriving them of it would have severely impaired their chances of continuing to earn a living at the major-league level.
Following the 1920 season, eight National League and nine American League pitchers were granted special dispensation to permanently continue to throw spitballs for the rest of their careers. Three of them—Stan Coveleski, Red Faber, and Burleigh Grimes—went on to fashion careers that were subsequently deemed worthy of the Hall of Fame. Had the spitball been removed from their arsenal, all of them might have instead suffered the fate of the many skilled practitioners of the spitball in the late teens that had not yet advanced to the major leagues. Since they were not on the exempted “grandfather” list, these pitchers were forbidden from throwing a spitter in the event they reached the majors, though they were permitted to continue using the spitball in the minors. A few, like Hal Carlson, nevertheless worked their way up to the majors after developing other pitches to replace the spitter, but most languished in the minors for the remainder of their careers. Among them were Frank Shellenback and Paul Wachtel, both of whom had pitched in the majors prior to the spitball abolition, but not enough to be included on the exempted list. Subsequent to 1920, Shellenback won a record 295 games in the Pacific Coast League and Wachtel dominated the Texas League, collecting a record 233 wins in that circuit.
Rosin Bags were first introduced before the 1926 season, when it was finally acknowledged that pitchers had been operating at an enormous handicap ever since the spitball and other freak deliveries were abolished in 1920. Since no one wanted to encourage hurlers to spit on their hands to get a better grip on the ball, small, finely meshed sealed bags containing rosin were provided by both major leagues for the umpires to hand out to pitchers. Since pitchers today are permitted to moisten their pitching hand and then wipe it dry as long as they are off the rubber, some will never seek a rosin bag for their entire careers.
In the early professional game, the individual on a team who performed the same functions as a manager does today was generally called a field captain and was drawn from the ranks of the team’s active players. A prime example was Adrian Anson, who was dubbed “Cap” when he assumed the captaincy of the Chicago White Stockings in 1879. Working in conjunction with the field captain on most teams was a manager, responsible for making travel arrangements, paying players, enforcing fines, etc. On some teams both roles were handled by one man, who sometimes also was the majority club owner. Charlie Byrne was the archetypal owner-manager who consulted with and answered only to himself when he ran the Brooklyn Bridegrooms in the mid-1880s. The last owner-manager to borrow Byrne’s playbook was Judge Fuchs, who occupied the Boston Braves dugout for the entire 1929 season (although Ted Turner tried it with his Atlanta Braves for one best-forgotten game in 1977, and Connie Mack owned a piece of the Philadelphia Athletics during most of his long soujourn with the team).
Even by Byrne’s time, few owners were still so egocentric as to act at the field helms of their clubs, and most teams now called the individual who filled this role as the manager. Playing managers remained common, but the two best teams during the 1890s, the Boston Beaneaters and the Baltimore Orioles, were skippered by Frank Selee and Ned Hanlon—men who were exclusively bench pilots during their pennant-winning seasons. By then the duties that the manager had formerly executed were in most cases the province of another club official, often the secretary.
It was common in the nineteenth century for non-playing managers such as Jim Mutrie and Frank Selee to sit on their team’s bench in street clothes (at that time consisting of a tie and sometimes hat) and leave all on-field responsibilities to one of their players. In Selee’s case, soon after he took the reins of the Boston National League club, he rarely left the Boston bench and handed over the team’s leadership to third baseman Billy Nash. On some days Selee did not appear at the park at all but spent the afternoon scouting a prospective player at a minor-league or amateur game near where his Beaneaters were playing. What was never seen in the nineteenth century was a non-playing manager sitting day after day on his team’s bench in full uniform. To this day, no one knows for certain what manager initiated this custom, but John McGraw is the most likely candidate.
Many managers over the years have continued to manage their clubs from the deep recesses of the dugout, or even from a spot in the stands after being ejected from a game. Before there were dugouts or sheltered stands, let alone cellphones and such, ejected managers had to be particularly resourceful. In 1884, Ted Sullivan, the player-manager of the Union Association’s Kansas City Cowboys, had on his squad a pitcher named William Walter “Peak-A-Boo” Veach. There are two stories as to how Veach acquired his nickname. It was sometimes said that he was named after “Peak-A-Boo,” a popular song written by the actor-comedian W. J. Scanlan for his Irish comedy Myles Aroon. The version Veach preferred was that he got the nickname with Kansas City in 1884 because he was so poor at watching the bases that Sullivan would sit on the bench and tip him when to throw to first to catch a runner off base. During games in which Sullivan was ejected while Veach was pitching, he would hide behind a pole and hold out a stick to signal Veach. The stance Veach took in the box so as to watch Sullivan without making it apparent where his ejected manager was hiding made him look as if he were peeking over his shoulder at something. Eventually teammates shortened the nickname to “Peekie,” but Veach continued to sign his letters “Walter Willie Veach” or “Peak-A-Boo Veach,” and there were many of them, almost all of which were eagerly printed by the newspapers to which they were mailed. As but one example, in 1901, Veach wrote to The Sporting News: “I have just received an offer to coach the Blind Asylum team. That will be a job out of sight. However, I will consider it carefully as I don’t want to go at anything blindly.”
Prior to the 1896 season, it was left to the judgment of the home team captain whether the field was fit to continue after play had been stopped. Naturally, this had high potential for abuse. A home side trailing, 10–0, before a game had gone the required five innings to become an official contest was unlikely to want to continue to play if there was a single drop of water on the field that could be cited as a possible hazard. Conversely, the home captain was apt to wait until dark before calling a game if his team happened to be down a run in the late innings when the heavens opened.
The first upheld American League forfeit fell under the post-1896 rule change. It came in Chicago on May 2, 1901, barely a week after the rival major league first opened its gates for regular season play. With a steady rain falling and the skies ever darkening, the home team, behind the pitching of team captain Clark Griffith, held a 5–2 lead over Detroit in the ninth inning with two out when third baseman Fred Hartman made a wild throw to first. Within minutes, Detroit had raced to a 6–5 lead. Griffith at that point began pressuring umpire Tommy Connolly to stop the game due to the intensifying rain, expecting that darkness would fall soon thereafter and force the score to revert to the previous inning. But Connolly refused to halt play and issued repeated warnings to Griffith for stalling. Griffith proceeded to walk Tigers second baseman Kid Gleason and attempted to do the same with right fielder Ducky Holmes, but Holmes doubled, plating Gleason and giving Detroit a 7–5 lead. Holmes then ran illegally from second to home, begging to be declared out so the top half of the inning could end—but Connolly had seen enough and forfeited the game to Detroit. Had Griffith managed to hold off the umpire for just a minute or two longer, he would have gotten his wish for a rain stoppage that under the old rule would have allowed him as field manager to call the game on account of darkness with Chicago winning, 5–2. The skies burst into a torrential downpour almost immediately after Connolly’s forfeit proclamation, but the deluge did not stop the crowd from rushing the field, attempting to get at the umpire. One fan reportedly took a swing at him before he could escape to a dugout. Chicago president and former player Charlie Comiskey hurried down to the field from his grandstand box and was able to scatter the angry fans.
Because Detroit had taken the lead before the forfeit was declared, the Tigers’ Emil Frisk received credit for the win and player-manager Griffith, who was as responsible as anyone for his team’s stalling tactics, took the loss. After the series between the two teams, which was clogged with kicking and bickering, Sporting Life observed, “Connolly will have to get up more nerve if he expects to succeed in the American League.”
Kid Gleason would later be the manager of Chicago during the 1919–20 Black Sox scandal. In 1953, despite his extremely rocky and at times spineless start at officiating in the majors, Connolly shared the honor with Bill Klem of being the first two umpires voted into the Hall of Fame.
A prime example of a special ground rule of the type depicted in this rule occurred in the very first modern World Series in 1903 between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Boston Americans. The two clubs played to overflow crowds in several games at both Boston’s Huntington Park and Pittsburgh’s Exposition Park, located in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. When the Series moved from Boston to Exposition Park in Game Four, the two managers—Fred Clarke of the Pirates and Jimmy Collins of the Americans—agreed to call any ball that rolled under a rope holding back the overflow crowd in fair territory a ground-rule triple. As a result, a Series-record 17 triples were hit in the four games in Pittsburgh alone, and Tommy Leach of the Pirates set an individual Series mark with four three-baggers. Boston ultimately won the fray, five games to three.
Twelve years later, the Boston club, known by then as the Red Sox, was again the beneficiary of another overflow-crowd ground rule in a World Series. Facing the Philadelphia Phillies in 1915, the Sox played to a sellout crowd in Philadelphia’s Baker Bowl on October 13, 1915, in what turned out to be the final game of the Series when Boston outfielder Harry Hooper homered in the top of the ninth to give his club a 5–4 win over future Hall of Famer Eppa Rixey. It was Hooper’s second home run of the contest and both were fly balls that bounced into temporary seats in right field that had been installed to accommodate the overflow crowds and declared, by mutual agreement, territory for a ground-ruled four-base hit. At the time, batted balls that ended up in the stands in fair territory, whether it be on the bounce or on the fly, were home runs.
Rule 4.05 (formerly Rule 3.13) is now all but an anachronism on the major-league level, since big-league teams no longer allow overflow crowds that infringe on the regular playing field, but there are still parks in which special ground rules apply.
For a long time, it was left up to each individual team to monitor its own players when it came to fraternizing with opponents, but the early rule books clearly stated that players in uniform were not permitted to sit among spectators. They also forbade umpires, managers, captains, or players from addressing the crowd during a game, but added the stipulation “except in case of necessary explanation.” It was not unusual in the 1870s and 1880s for an umpire to stop play while he explained a ruling to the audience or for a team captain to appeal to spectators for help when an umpire’s decision did not go his way. Similarly, umpires in the early years on occasion would call upon members of the crowd for help on plays where their vision was blocked or they otherwise felt incapable of rendering a decision without impartial aid.
The fraternization rule, in no matter whose hands its enforcement is placed, has always been abused with near impunity. Anyone fortunate enough to go to a major-league game at a park where they still let fans in early enough to watch batting practice will see players and coaches on both teams mingling freely around the batting cage. Rules against players, coaches, and managers chatting during a game with opponents and even spectators have been likewise ignored. Prior to the 1883 season, the management of the Philadelphia Athletics team in the American Association handed down a list of club rules that included the following: “No member of the team while dressed in his uniform shall be permitted to flirt with or ‘mash’ any female or lady.” This edict had about as much chance of being obeyed as did another club rule that said: “While away from home every player must report at the hotel to the Manager before 11:30 p.m. and retire to his room for the night. No player shall lie abed after eight o’clock in the morning while on a trip unless he is sick or disabled.”
The 2020 season marks the 46th anniversary of the last occasion when a visiting team won by forfeit after spectators invaded the field while a game was in progress and the home team was unable to stifle the havoc. To bolster sagging attendance in a city riddled by inflation and rampant unemployment, the Cleveland Indians designated their June 4, 1974, night contest with the Texas Rangers a special “10-Cent Beer Night.” The affair brought in a crowd of 25,134, but at a high cost when it proved to be perhaps the most embarrassingly inept promotional scheme in MLB history. Cleveland failed to added extra security for the contest, despite the fact that the same two clubs had brawled on the field in Arlington the week before. There is no record of the number of cups of beer that were sold—one estimate was between 60,000 and 65,000 10-ounce cups of Stroh’s—but it was definitely astronomical and, in any event, was instrumental in the sale of beer and other alcoholic beverages at major league parks eventually being halted after the seventh inning.
With the score tied, 5–5, in the bottom of the ninth and the winning Cleveland run perched on third base with two out, Tribe fans in various stages of inebriation poured out of the right-field stands and began tussling with Texas outfielder Jeff Burroughs. Burroughs fought back, but when more fans surrounded him, players from both teams rushed to his aid, some armed with bats. Order was eventually restored, but the peace was short-lived. After umpire Nestor Chylak suffered a lacerated hand when a fan threw a chair at him to start another melee, the game was forfeited to Texas. Nine fans were arrested after the incident; seven more were hospitalized and Texas manager Billy Martin summed up the evening, declaring, “That’s probably the closest we’ll come to seeing someone get killed in the game of baseball.”
Ironically, the Rangers franchise had also been involved in the last previous forfeit that was triggered by a crowd-related incident while a game was in progress. On September 30, 1971, the Rangers franchise was still based in the nation’s capital and about to conclude its last game as the Washington Senators, a night contest against the New York Yankees at RFK Stadium. The game meant nothing in the standings to Washington, which was buried deep in fifth place in the American League East Division, but New York stood at 81–80, needing a win to finish above .500.
Behind, 7–5 with two out in the top of the ninth, the Yankees were suddenly given an unexpected gift as Horace Clarke strolled to the plate to face Washington reliever Joe Grzenda. Outraged at owner Bob Short’s decision a few days earlier to move the club to the Dallas area, thus bringing an end to major-league baseball in a city that had had a team for the past seventy-one years, the bulk of the Washington crowd of 14,460 swarmed onto the field and began ripping up home plate, the bases, and the pitching rubber. Realizing the chances of completing the game were nil, the umpires had no choice but to award the Yankees a 9–0 forfeit victory, thereby assuring them of a winning season.
