The Great Spitball Debate of 1908
The Abolition Movement
The Great Spitball Debate of 1908
I’m going to blame this one on Joe Posnanski.
Posnanski wrote an excellent blog post a few days ago about a Bruce Springsteen song.
Now, I don’t care much for Springsteen (I spend too much time on live Jerry Garcia stuff to listen to anything else). However, I did enjoy the talk about changing the words “speedball” to “spitball” in a live performance, which I thought had a nice ring to it.
You can read Joe’s original article here:
That’s the first reason why you’re reading this.
The second reason why I considered writing about the spitter is a “Symposium Upon the ‘Spit Ball’” that I accidentally discovered while browsing through the 1909 Spalding Guide.
We’re going to go through that in a second. However, I did want to mention that I’m not the first to come across this.
In a SABR article 20 years ago, Steve Steinberg made reference to this “symposium” in passing. Except, of course, that he got the reference wrong. He said it was in the Reach guide. It’s not: it’s in the Spalding guide, which I happen to have open in front of me right now.
By the way, if you are a budding pitcher hoping to learn the ways of the ancients, Steinberg has a collection of quotes on how to throw the darn thing on his website. It’s worth a read.
Anyway, on with the symposium.
Symposium Upon the “Spit Ball”
Instead of awkwardly summarizing the whole thing for you, I’ll just let you read it yourself:
Note that the opposition to the spitball in 1908 seems to have been focused on the difficulty fielders had with throwing a loaded ball, which is something you don’t hear people talk about these days.
I’ve never tested it myself, but I think that John R. Robinson’s assertion that the ball would be cleaned by a single foul tip is pretty interesting. And Mitchell is correct: the not-so-secret truth is that the spitball probably never actually died.
Note that Ray Ziegler was not only opposed to the spitball, but also to that dreaded foul strike rule — you know, the one that we take for granted today.
Edward F. Bang says here what I believe was the real reason behind this debate: the plummeting batting averages. All of this talk about the spitter being an “unsanitary” pitch becomes hilarious when you learn how it was actually thrown. The truth is that its use was mostly for psychological effect going way back to its earliest days. I’m convinced that the whole abolition movement was actually done in hopes of increasing batting averages — and attendance along with it.
I actually agree with George C. Rice in this instance. I think that they should have left it alone.
Gym Bagley’s final quip, almost poetic in nature, concludes the matter.
I’d love to know what you think. Should we go back to the spitter? I’m in favor of it, though I know there aren’t many out there who agree with me.
The Debate In The Newspapers
That bit in the Spalding Guide was a quick summary of the comments about the spitter that popped up in newspapers across the country. Here’s a quick overview of a few interesting articles in chronological order, ranging from January through October 1908. This is not a comprehensive list of these articles by any means; in fact, the search term “spit ball” for 1908 alone gave me over 3,000 hits on newspapers.com.
Knowing how Chesbro wound up pitching in 1908, he might have regretted giving up on the spitter.
It’s really amazing to look back in the archives and find an article by an umpire from before the greatest pitching season of all time, swearing that the spit ball is in the decline. By the way, Evans was wrong: that Chesbro game was in 1904, not 1905.
Here’s one for the statistical theorists out there:
I’m guessing that the editors in Beloit, Kansas weren’t the best at fielding theory. It’s an interesting opinion, though.
Those who know baseball history beyond Hollywood are already familiar with Eddie Cicotte’s fame as a knuckleball pitcher. I think it is still generally accepted that he invented the knuckle curve, which is still in use today.
This one is part of a long series of debates about when pitches like the spitball were invented. I still don’t think we have clear answers to this day.
This one makes me confused. If the pitcher likely can’t control the spitter, why wait to use it until he’s in a pinch? Why not use it when nobody is on base?
In hindsight, it’s hard to find any 1908 games with numerous doubles, triples, or home runs.
This is more of that debate about how old the spitball really is. It’s probably impossible to know.
This is one of a long series of articles detailing how Frank Chance and Fielder Jones were absolutely opposed to the spitball. They went on a sort of abolitionist crusade around the sports pages of the country that summer.
As you can see here, though, the abolitionist movement was not limited to major league players in Chicago. It was a hot-button topic in the minor leagues, too.
Joe Kelley of the Boston Doves also got in on the act.
And even National League President Pulliam got in on the act.
In the end there was talk, but no action:
That didn’t stop the debate, however.
I’ll chime back in later with more about the movement to get rid of certain objectionable pitches.
We tend to associate the death of the spitball with the death of Ray Chapman in 1920, forgetting that Carl Mays was not a spitball pitcher, and that the spitball had actually been banned prior to that fateful beaning. There are interesting and complicated details to this history that often get lost in the mix. Look for more later!