Cheaters

I hate cheaters in any sport, win it or lose on your own ability, and baseball has had artful rule benders almost it's entire history. I am not even talking yet about the drug issue. I will, just not today.
No, what I am looking at is the ball scuffers, the bat tinkerers to make the ball dance, and dart away from hitters, and the guys who add cork or super balls to get an advantage on a lighter bat to increase their bat speed, or more bounce as it were.
The last legal hurler tossing the spitter was Burleigh Grimes, a long time ago, but that has not stopped many pitchers from scuffing the ball on a nail, a thumbtack, sandpaper, their belt buckle, or any number of rough surfaces to mark the ball.

As recently as the Tigers - St. Louis world series where lefty Kenny Rogers was suspected of doing something nasty with either pine tar or stick'um, and they are very good at it too.

Ask Gaylord Perry, he confessed once he retired to using slippery elm, and Vaseline and had to change it's hiding place each game since he knew the umps were always watching. He also admitted that even there were times he just wanted the hitters to believe he was using a foreign substance, and he wasn't, but the fear factor was there in the hitter's mind.

Don Sutton was caught with an emery board, Joe Neikro used a thumbtack taped inside his glove, and the battery of Denny McLain and Bill Freehan ( 1967 Tigers ) had a new twist, McLain would toss back a ball to Freehan, who rubbed it against his side, which had a patch of Vaseline, and with the home jersey being white, it was unspotted by opposing teams, who claimed McLain was throwing illegal pitches.

They checked out McLain, and of course never found a thing. Ingenious eh ??

As for the hitters, well they had to counteract the hurlers with tricks of their own, with cork inserted to allow the bat to be lighter to swing, but the meat of the bat, the sweat spot was still intact. The other rotten trick was drill or hollowing out the core of the bat and seeing how many super balls, hard and very dense so as to generate as much oomph as one could when you made contact.

Sammy Sosa was caught corking, and maybe Sammy wasn't done there, but that's another article for another day.

I will leave you a picture of the most honest pitcher I ever heard of, I think he turned in a teammate once in spring training, and his name is Sandy Koufax.

More to come.