Ty Cobb stealing home. Would you want to be in this guy's way?
Posted on 06/05/2003 6:18:58 PM PDT by Chi-townChief
There was a baseball play a few years ago that didn't start with a windup and a pitch, but instead with Dave Bresnahan going to the grocery store to buy some potatoes. He went home, peeled a few of them down to just smaller than a baseball and drew laces onto them with a red pen.
Bresnahan, a catcher hitting .149 for the Class AA Williams-port Bills, then put a potato in a spare glove in the dugout and waited for his moment. It came with two out in the fifth inning and a runner on third. He told the umpire his glove had broken--it hadn't, really--and then went to the dugout to get the one with the potato. He caught the next pitch in the glove, then fired the potato down the third-base line over everyone's head and into the outfield.
It appeared he had made an error, ''so then the runner tried to come home,'' Bresnahan said. ''And I tagged him with the ball. He was out.''
In baseball, cheaters can prosper. In the real world, ''cheating'' means to deal dishonestly to gain an advantage. In the baseball dictionary, it means evening out the field, getting back what someone else is trying to steal from you.
That brings things to Sammy Sosa, caught cheating Tuesday night when his bat broke and revealed cork inside. Inserting cork in a bat helps a hitter add distance. So in the real world, Sammy has been disgraced. But in the baseball world, Cubs president Andy Mac-Phail could keep a straight face when he said this on Wednesday:
''There is a culture of deception in this game. It's been in this game for 100 years. I do not look at this in terms of ethics. It's the culture of the game. I wish we'd get away from it, but it is what it is.''
It starts with ringers on the company softball team. Is that big, muscular guy really from your accounting department? It carries through Little League, which used a boy, Danny Almonte, who cheated age rules by claiming he was younger than he was. It goes on to the minor leagues, where catchers are throwing potatoes.
And it funnels all the way to the majors, where spitballs are taught and pitchers learn other ways to doctor the ball with sandpaper, files and emery boards to get an edge. Hitters might cheat right back, putting cork in their bats. In the old days, many hitters cut grooves into their bats to help get better control of the ball.
In baseball, cheating is custom, passed down through generations.
''Yes,'' Bresnahan said. ''But there's kind of an unwritten cheater's code. Altering equipment is out of the box.''
That's not the way former Cubs pitcher George Frazier sees it. The Sosa bashers are suggesting his career accomplishments now are tainted. But you can't go back and remove things from history. If you could, you might have to take away the Cubs' 1984 division title, too.
''You better believe I was throwing spitters that year,'' said Frazier, now a color commentator for the Colorado Rockies. ''With those short fences at Wrigley and the wind blowing out? I don't want to say it's culturally accepted, but you did hear a lot of things happening.
''I got started with the spitter in 1983 with the Yankees. Billy Martin was my manager, and he took me aside and told me to throw it. I told him I didn't have to, and he said throw it here or don't throw it in Triple-A. Later, I learned from the best in the business, Gaylord Perry. He said, 'You look kind of bad doing it. Let me show you a few things.'
''I don't feel a bit guilty. It was just a nice equalizer. ... I threw a spitter for five years and never got caught.''
Others, of course, have been caught.
One day in 1980, Seattle pitcher Rick Honeycutt's pitches were zig-zagging. Kansas City asked the umpire to check his glove, and it turned out he had a thumbtack and sandpaper taped to his index finger. He was thrown out of the game. But as he walked off, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he forgot about the thumbtack, wiped his brow and slashed a cut on his head.
In 1994, the White Sox suspected Cleveland's Albert Belle was using a corked bat. The umpire took the bat away and put it in his dressing room. Knowing the bat was fixed, the Indians had pitcher Jason Grimsley climb through the ceiling tiles to the umpires' dressing room. He took the bat and replaced it with one from teammate Paul Sorrento. Problem was, Sorrento's name was on the bat. The fix was obvious. Eventually, Belle was suspended for seven games.
In 1974, which Frazier called baseball's corked-bat era, the Yankees' Graig Nettles' bat exploded as he hit a grounder, and several super balls bounced out. Though he denied it, he likely had hollowed out part of the bat from the end, filled the hole with the hard, bouncing balls and filled the hole back up.
That's how a bat is corked, too.
In 1987, an umpire approached Minnesota pitcher Joe Niekro on the mound. Niekro reached into his back pocket and dropped an emery board behind him. The umpire saw it, and Niekro was out for 10 games.
And these aren't just a few isolated examples. They are the game's culture.
Norm Cash admitted he won the batting title in 1961 with a corked bat. He hit .361 that year, 90 points higher than his career average.
Ken Caminiti told Sports Illustrated that when he won the MVP award, he was juiced up on illegal steroids. He said half the league was taking them.
Two years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported the New York Giants' miracle pennant drive in 1951 was aided by a sign-stealing system involving a player in the scoreboard with a telescope and a system of bells and whistles. Even Bobby Thomson might have been tipped off on his famous home run.
Frazier said he used to use put a particularly greasy shampoo in excess in the back of his hair, rub the back of his head and then wipe the stuff onto the ball, making it flutter in mid-air.
''I threw three in a row one day to Dave Parker,'' he said. ''Why not? There he was with that war club trying to beat my brains out.''
Frazier also said he had a corked bat that he would use in batting practice. The pitchers, he said, would bet $100 on who would do best in practice, and he wanted to ''equalize'' things.
Acceptable cheating? Not in the real world. But it helped keep Frazier in the league for 10 years.
Actually, though, after Bres-nahan threw that potato, he was kicked off the team and never played professionally again. Bat-ters hitting .149 don't get another chance, he said. But those with 500 homers do.
''The thing is, Sammy was such an idiot to do it,'' Bresnahan said. ''He doesn't have to risk it. That's like Bill Gates cheating at a poker game. It just doesn't make sense.''
Not in the real world, anyway.
mailto:gcouch@suntimes.com
There was an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune today. In the article, it said that corking a bat does not actually help with distance, although many ball players believe that it does. The reason is that since the bat is only in contact with the ball for 1/1000 of a second, there is too little time for any additional "flexibility" that the cork might give to the bat to be applied to the ball. In fact because the bat is lighter the ball actually goes a slightly shorter distance. What apparently does happen is that the lighter bat gives the player slightly longer to decide to swing and hit the ball, so the chance of a hit goes up.
Another time, while managing and playing the outfield, he ordered the pitcher to walk Babe Ruth, Ruth relaxed, the pitcher threw a strike. Cobb was irate, ran to the pitcher and read him down in front of the whole place, and warned him to walk Ruth. After returning to the field, the pitcher threw another strike to a relaxed Ruth. Exploding in anger, Cobb retired the pitcher to great fanfare and calmly told the releiver to walk Ruth. The next pitch to an equally relaxed Ruth was a strike, and Cobb was rolling in the outfield laughing.
Can anybody post a picture of Barry Bonds as he looked ten years ago? The difference is totally amazing; as I recall he was tall and thin. Now he's got veins popping from the muscles on his muscles. Same with Mark McGuire, his neck suddenly got the size of a California Redwood.
That was pretty funny to watch.
Sneaky devil. Ty Cobb was the greatest.
Didn't Cobb also steal third once from first without ever coming close to touching second? He apparantly ran almost directly behind the pitcher's mound- straight from 1st to 3rd. I believe he got away with it too or is that part just legend? Just the balls it took to do that in front of the fans...
Hadn't heard that one...but he was certainly a piece of work. I read his biography recently ("Cobb" by Al (?) Stump) His dad was a Georgia State Senator who was killed by his mother before ever seeing Ty play...and he was called up to the Majors (Detroit) at age 17 as I recall. Lifetime .367 average, with only his first partial year ever below .300.
p.s. I'm not a big baseball fan. I watch maybe two games a year at series time.
Ty Cobb stealing home. Would you want to be in this guy's way?
I saw that replayed many times on TV. But wasn't Niekro a knuckle ball pitcher? Why would he need help to make the ball move when the problem was that it was already moving so much it was hard to throw for strikes?.
They say he also sharpened his cleats to a razor edge, giving one further pause about getting in his way. Personally, I never cared for a player like that. I was not a Pete Rose fan either for similar reasons.
What was funny to me about that incident is the way the little emory board sort of flying away and the one umpire's head following the trajectory.
A lot of that was rumour designed to psyche out his opponents.
Here's some quotes from the Georgia Peach from a website:
"Watch out you big baboon. I'm going down on the first pitch." "I'm taking third on the next pitch." "Out of my way, ice wagon. I'm coming home."--------
Cobb described baseball as: "Not unlike a war. If we cannot only beat them but run wild on them in addition, treat them like a bunch of bush leaguers, it is liable to put them up in the air for a week."
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"Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded man. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a struggle for supremacy, survival of the fittest."
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In legend, I am a sadistic, slashing, swashbuckling despot, a Draco of the diamond, who waged war in the guise of sport. The men I went against didn't call me a "dirty" player. That charge has come from those anointed with the critical powers developed through carrying a press card. The truth is that I believe, and always have believed, that no man, in any walk of life, can attain success who holds in his heart malice, spite, or littleness toward his opponents. The competitor who comes armed with right in his heart and mind has nothing whatever to fear. The honorable way is the only way.
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But I did retaliate. That I freely admit. If any player took unfair advantage of me, my one thought was to strike back as quickly and effectively as I could and put the fear of God into him. Let the other fellow fire the first shot, and he needed to be on the qui vive from then on. For I went looking for him. And when I found him, he usually regretted his act—and rarely repeated it. I commend this procedure to all young players who are of the aggressive type. The results are most satisfactory.
He was certainly a character.
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