I wonder if anyone ever just put something very dry and slick on their fingers, like spray silicone or boot waterproofing. That way you wouldn’t have to keep putting it on and nothing would be on the ball. I know they use some stuff that dries up with no evidence like hand sanitizer, but you would have to put more on. Anything to let the ball slip off the fingers and be grabbed by your thumb to give forward rotation with a fastball motion.
They used to call the knuckler the ‘dry spitter.’ Here’s an awesome RA Dickey gif, what Hoyt Wilhelm used to call his ‘spinner.’ Looks like bugs bunny throwing his corkscrew. RA threw this one at 80mph. Yes, 80mph. The catcher closes his eyes when he catches it.
Freegards
I wonder if anyone ever just put something very dry and slick on their fingers, like spray silicone or boot waterproofing. That way you wouldn’t have to keep putting it on and nothing would be on the ball. I know they use some stuff that dries up with no evidence like hand sanitizer, but you would have to put more on. Anything to let the ball slip off the fingers and be grabbed by your thumb to give forward rotation with a fastball motion.Apparently, before he went to outright doctoring, Whitey Ford was known to use a kind of stickum for a slightly better grip on his curve ball. He kept it in a hollowed-out deodorant tube on which the label hadn't been changed.
There was a hilarious incident involving that stuff in the Yankee clubhouse one fine day. Yogi Berra, apparently, had a habit of mooching personal products now and then, so Mickey Mantle decided to break that habit for him. He put Ford's stickum tube in a spot where Berra couldn't resist, and Yogi fell for it. Three minutes later, he ran screaming into the trainer's room: he had to have his arms shaved loose after Ford's stickum pinned his inner biceps to his sides.
On the other hand, there was Mudcat Grant. Once upon a time, Grant liked to soap the inside of his uniform jersey and, when the warmth of the afternoon took hold, he'd have himself a little soap foam next to his belt to scoop onto a pitch. He got away with it until the day he inadvertently put too much of the stuff on his gray traveling uniform and the soapy foam was just too obvious to ignore.
They used to call the knuckler the ‘dry spitter.’ Here’s an awesome RA Dickey gif, what Hoyt Wilhelm used to call his ‘spinner.’ Looks like bugs bunny throwing his corkscrew. RA threw this one at 80mph. Yes, 80mph. The catcher closes his eyes when he catches it.They used to call the split-finger fastball the "legal" spitter because of its comparable break. George Bamberger (major league manager, minor league pitcher), who once made his way pitching in the minors with his own spitter (he called it a "Staten Island sinkerball"), once said, "Suppose I had my middle finger amputated? I bet you I'd have one helluva split finger fastball."
Finally, since you just about can't talk about the spitter without talking about the man himself, a Gaylord Perry story: Perry off the field was known as a friendly fellow, including with the umpires---even with those who had him frisked on the mound at regular intervals.
One afternoon, Perry bumped into an umpire who'd had him frisked the night before. They chatted amiable until the talk came around to the umpire's son, who pitched in the Little League, and whose team was getting beaten rather regularly. "Gaylord," the ump said, "you think you could teach my kid how to throw that thing?"
