The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball Blog

Baseball blogger Zumsteg (ussmariner.com) argues that cheating-within reason-is not only not a bad thing, it actually makes baseball a more nuanced game. Using a wealth of anecdotal evidence and some statistical analysis, he argues that baseball has evolved hand-in-hand with the aid of its scoundrels, scamps, and shifty characters-and that doctoring the ball or stealing signs necessitates teams, umpires and even fans adopt more complex strategy. Zumsteg draws the line at gambling, game fixing and steroid use, showing little sympathy for the Black Sox and even less for Pete Rose. While baseball aficionados will be familiar with many of Zumsteg’s stories, his wit will keep most casual fans entertained. Whether he’s describing what might happen in a car crash with Pete Rose (“I admitted that I hit your car … Can’t we stop this witch-hunt and get on with our lives?”) or laying blame for the steroid era on everyone from the commissioner to the fans, Zumsteg dispenses with the sanctimoniousness of most current sports writing. Although his prose style and humor are sometimes better suited to the Web (a few lengthy asides come across as amateurish), Zumsteg still creates a funny, honest look at the history of baseball’s black arts.

This morning I got a copy of the final version of the book, hot off the secret location where the presses are rolling. I don’t think it was the first one, but it must have been close. It’s pretty awesome. And it really is another step up from the pre-copy edit version, which makes me happy.

I loved researching The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball because it meant I discovered all kinds of cool stuff. For instance, I never knew Tommy John cheated before I started writing the book.

At first, I came across some veiled references, insinuations, and then I found an amazing Peter Gammons column attacking the league for tolerating cheaters which told the story of a coach for an opposing team that collected foul balls or balls the umpire tossed, each of them scratched in exactly the same place as Gammons described it.

Here’s the interesting thing, then – many of cheaters would come out and admit it at some point, usually after they’d retired and didn’t need to fear the wrath of extra-vigilant umpire. But I couldn’t find Tommy John ever fessing up – I found denials, and the evidence wasn’t strong enough for me to write up a feature about it (though it does turn up in passing).

Yet Tommy John pitched for 26 years. Even if you figure he started cheating after 1975, he came back in 1976 and pitched through the 1989 season. That’s a long time to generally avoid attention, but if Gammons’ article was correct, together with the other complaints, Tommy John cheated for a long, long time without any of the attention or notoriety that Gaylord Perry labored under.

In the end, I couldn’t put a range around when he might have been cheating, but it lead me to one of the more important conclusions of the book: that there’s a lot of cheating that goes on I’d have to dig for, while at the same time being careful to draw distinctions about what the evidence was. And yet if you asked for my opinion, I’m 100% certain he scuffed, and only slightly less certain he did it regularly during his awesome six-season run from 1977-1981.

What’s even stranger is that in 1979, John admitted he’d thrown a spitter to Murray Chass in the New York Times (6-25-1979):

“I threw a spitter to Mickey Mantle once,” John admitted the other day. “I think it was in 1967. I was with the White Sox at the time, and we were way ahead. I threw the spitter, and the ball went straight down. Mickey fouled it off. I don’t know how he did it. But he just looked at me and started laughing. I started laughing and had to walk off the mound. After the inning, he said ‘Man, your sinker really improved on that one pitch.’”

That John at least experimented with and could throw the spitter without putting it into the stands means it’s likely he looked into other ways to doctor the ball as well, which brings us back to Gammons, and the persistent rumors he engaged in scuffing.

The book offers a whole chapter on sign-stealing (buy it!). Here’s another example of electronic sign-stealing. I found this at the Hall of Fame library loose files, while researching rumors that the Al Lopez-managed White Sox stole signs early in the 1960s (a period from ~1959 to ~1962). The article clipping’s dated 9-30-1967 and I believe it’s from the Sporting News, based on the layout and some other cues, but it’s unlabeled. The article is “By Joe Falls, In the Detroit Free Press”.

The article discusses various means the White Sox used: stealing out of the center field scoreboard, and using flashing lights and even using a loudspeaker in the dugout. But the unique part was that they

…wired the third base coaching box for sound and even gave pitcher Early Wynn an electronic receiver to use in his cap so that Manager Al Lopez could communicate with him on the mound

The coaching box harkens back to the earliest incident of electronic cheating ever (which is in the book) but for the team to wire the pitcher – I believe that’s the only instance I came across.

It gets better, though.

The White Sox even installed wires around the third base coaching box and equipped Cuccinello with a special receiver which was pinned under his uniform shirt. This enabled him to get signs from Lopez without ever turning around to look at his manager.

Billy Martin tried something like this (with funnier results) in an incident that’s in the book, but I don’t want to spoil that joke.

Hey, my publisher’s got the whole introduction up on Amazon. Check it out.

From the March 23, 2007 issue, it’s one of four books reviewed:

THE CHEATER’S GUIDE TO BASEBALL
Derek Zumsteg
The Pitch
An irreverent history of (and instructional guide to) spitballing, bat corking,
sign stealing, and other practices that “made baseball into what it is today.”

Curveball
Using performance-enhancing drugs “is not nearly as wrong as game fixing,”
insists Zumsteg. “Someone using steroids is trying to play better, not tamper
with the essential nature of the contest.” Somewhere, Barry Bonds is smiling.

Final Score
A stand-up double. B

So he tells ESPN.

There are holes in this. It’s hard to know why anyone takes Rose statements seriously, or at the very least, doesn’t take some time to contrast them against fairly-well-established evidence.

Harder to understand is Rose’s reasons for doing this – why he’s constantly telling mostly-truths with obvious ommissions, or taking steps towards coming clean but trying not to admit to the worst of it (for instance, the “I bet on baseball but never from the clubhouse” statement).

I don’t know how Rose manages to get taken off the ineligible list at this point. If Selig does retire, he’ll get another shot at it, but every time he does an interview it seems to set his case back.

Yup. He thinks fans want it.

I discuss Rose at length in the book.

So, what happens if the Commissioner loses his mind and reinstates Rose?

He’s eligible to take jobs in baseball.
Rose argues he’d then be eligible to be on the next Hall of Fame ballot, that because he wasn’t on the ballot his eligibility doesn’t lapse. The rules seem… less on his side.

From the HoF website:

3. Eligible Candidates — Candidates to be eligible must meet the following requirements:

1. A baseball player must have been active as a player in the Major Leagues at some time during a period beginning twenty (20) years before and ending five (5) years prior to election.

So.. was he active as a player in the major leagues at some time between twenty years and five years prior to election?

Last played in 1986. Which is… whoops.

What else?

2. Player must have played in each of ten (10) Major League championship seasons, some part of which must have been within the period described in 3 (A).

Yup. Nice reference back to that rule.

3. Player shall have ceased to be an active player in the Major Leagues at least five (5) calendar years preceding the election but may be otherwise connected with baseball.

He’s clear there.

4. In case of the death of an active player or a player who has been retired for less than five (5) full years, a candidate who is otherwise eligible shall be eligible in the next regular election held at least six (6) months after the date of death or after the end of the five (5) year period, whichever occurs first.

Not applicable.

5. Any player on Baseball’s ineligible list shall not be an eligible candidate.

And finally, he’d be okay on this one.

The good news is that he’d be waiting for a Veteran’s Committee election.
The bad news is someone would almost certainly give him a job, and that would mean all kinds of noises about redemption, and new starts, condemnation and hair-rending and then, when he’s eligible, we go through it all again.

Fortunately, there’s no sign Selig might consider this latest push any more seriously than any other.

This 1915 Baseball Magazine article, “The Emery Ball Strangest of Freak Deliveries,” traces the development of the emery ball, in which the surface of the ball is scuffed, from the “spitballing” of Russel Ford which turned out to be something else entirely.

“Pitching the emery ball was not unlike handling a stick of dynamite. It was the best delivery in the world, and yet the pitcher never knew when the very excellence of the delivery might not work against him and throw away for him the game he was winning by his fine work in the box. I speedily discovered this deadly proclivity of the emery ball and guarded against it as much as possible. In fact, I made a scientific study of the ball and its freak moves, and as I was the only pitcher who even knew that it existed, I had the field to myself.”

Cy Falkenberg ends up spoiling the deal for everyone. It’s a fascinating contemporary article.

In the latest drug scandal, there are a lot of interesting issues. The country’s overzealous pursuit of doctors who prescribe pain-killers to patients with chronic pain helps to create and sustain a grey market in those drugs (and Viagra, and…), David Bell possibly being snared and exposed as taking fertility drugs, which could be for entirely legitimate, personal reasons, or for nefarious, performance-enhancing purposes.

I’ve been watching the Moreno vs Matthews fight. Matthews, on advice of his lawyer, has shut up and intends to ride this out. The guy who signs his paychecks, though, says not only that Matthews should be open and forthright about what happened, but he’s making ominous sounds about “resolving” the situation.

It seems unlikely that Moreno’s going to void Matthews’ contract. Players have clauses in their contracts that say they can be voided if they do dangerous things like x, y, or z, and they generally also have a “morals” clause that could void the deal (this is what people talk about when a player gets a DUI or like arrest). But on the news leaking out of the prosecution, there’s nothing to tie Matthews to something he did while under the Angels’ contract, and there’s nothing he did that violated an MLB policy in place at the time.

Voiding contracts on much clearer grounds hasn’t been done yet: Jason Giambi might have come the closest of any player, and the Yankees, with all their money, lawyers, and cantankerous owner, still didn’t go for it. In general, teams are generally reluctant to go after even players they know have violated specific clauses in their contract (like Jeff Kent, with the Giants).

If Moreno’s serious about pressing this, it would a little amusing because he’d be the first to put a significant new pressure on players to not use – the fear that they’d see their contracts voided – while at the same time he’d just reinforced with the contract that there’s a huge incentive for players to do whatever they can to get ahead in their career year. Taking this a step further, it would seem like if you’re in a contract year, you might as well give it a shot. If you’re caught, you’re SOL trying to crank out a career performance, but you won’t have lost much compared to what you’d have made not trying. And if you’re caught later, say the lab’s busted or whatever else might happen, that’s a longshot but you’re still going to be able to fight the action and likely settle, and if not, you’re stilll not behind where you’d be not going for it.

It’s a minimal disincentive compared to the amount of money a player can make with a breakout contract year.

Moreno, of course, has received general applause from the press for his statements.

Three posts in a row on steroids. Time for a topic change.