After years of hilariously acrimonious debate -- at a convention in New York, one delegate even dubbed it a "boy's rule" -- the rule was officially voted out for fair balls in Foul balls, however, could still be caught on a bounce for another 20 years. Baseball owed much of its origin to cricket, and one of the game's first codified sets of rules -- the Knickerbocker rules, drafted in for New York's Knickerbocker baseball club -- speak to those roots: He raised his delivery just above the waist in the mids, and from there, it was only a matter of time before the overhand delivery was born, if only because this is not the face of a man you want to mess with:.
But at least the Chad Bradfords of the world can rest a little bit easier tonight, knowing that, once upon a time, they were the normal ones.
Glossary of baseball
One side of the bat was allowed to be flat from to Allow bats to have a flat face, much like cricket. After much hand-wringing, the NL adopted the policy in , and, combined with changes to the pitching distance, runs began to increase -- until everyone soon realized that flat bats had a tendency to splinter, and the rule was rescinded in If you read the above and thought, "Wow, that seems destined to cause all kind of record-keeping difficulties," well, you would be absolutely correct!
- 10 bizarre rules from baseball's past | theranchhands.com.
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A staggering 11 players hit. The statistics were even rewritten in by the Special Baseball Records Committee , with drastic consequences: Cap Anson, who hit. In , MLB reversed the Committee's decision, and Cap now sits proudly in the Hall of Fame with over 3, hits and one stellar mustache:. As for the rule itself, it was deeply unpopular even at the time -- with a New York Times article even referring to walks as "phantom hits" -- and it was quickly rectified after one year.
The plight of the umpire is a difficult one: You try tracking a small white ball traveling at ridiculously high speeds, with a stadium full of people and the entire Internet ready to castigate you if you're wrong. Being an umpire at the turn of the 20th century, though?
10 bizarre baseball rules you won't believe actually existed
That actually sounds pretty great: They were chosen from the crowd prior to first pitch -- they were often prominent members of the local community -- and rather than spend all that energy to squat behind the catcher, umpires were given easy chairs in the general vicinity of home plate. And that was just the beginning of the perks. From Ohio's Marion Star newspaper in Rather than crouching, catchers would stand a few feet behind home until the early s.
Nowadays, catchers serve a vital defensive purpose -- from calling a game to the art of framing pitches to throwing out baserunners. In the mids, though, their responsibilities were far simpler: Just get in the way of the ball, please. Catchers were originally conceived as glorified backstops , standing a few feet behind home plate and making sure balls didn't roll past them. A couple of innovative souls began to buck this trend in the s, but the crouching we're accustomed to wouldn't truly spread until the beginning of the 20th century.
The spitball was outlawed in -- but pitchers who had been throwing it for years were grandfathered in.
Covering The Plate: A Baseball Catcher Tells All : NPR
Pitchers doctoring baseballs was always an ethical gray area, but it was a fairly common practice in the early days, and spit wasn't nearly the worst of it: Wanting to bring more offense to the game, MLB responded in , outlawing the practice for good. Bruce Weber, a New York Times reporter, not only interviewed dozens of professional umpires but entered their world, trained to become an umpire, then spent a season working games from Little League to big league spring training.
Writing with deep knowledge of and affection for baseball, he delves into such questions as: Is the ump part of the game or outside of it? And what do umps and managers say to each other during an argument, really?
The Strike Zone
To provide this unique—if controversial—look at major league baseball as umpires see it, Lee Gutkind spent the season traveling with the umpiring crew of Doug Harvey crew chief , Nick Colosi, Harry Wendelstedt, and Art Williams, the first black umpire in the National League. The result is an honest, realistic, insightful study of the private and professional world of major league umpires: As relevant today as it was in , this illustrated chronicle shows how little has changed in the lives and duties of umpires in the last quarter century.
But they didn't want to be compared with real people; they wanted to be umpires—on a plateau above most everyone else. Hall of Fame umpire Bill McGowan controlled the field of play as much with his personality as with the rulebook; his respected year career, including 2, consecutive games, was among the longest in baseball history. McGowan was the home plate umpire in the first-ever American League pennant playoff game, Cleveland versus Boston in Famous for his sense of humor, great dramatics, and wild gestures, he was known to turn a strike into a ball if he thought a player deserved a break, or to eject half a team if they annoyed him.
This richly illustrated biography gives an intimate view of this talented umpire, from his birth in and long marriage to his death from diabetes in With research including interviews with former players as well as family members, the work provides a wealth of anecdotes and insights into his profession. The textbook McGowan wrote for his students is included as an appendix. For thirteen seasons, from until her unconditional release in , Postema umpired more than two thousand baseball games, making national news as she worked in various minor leagues as high as level AAA—one step below the majors.
She also called many major league spring training games as well as the Hall of Fame game in between the Yankees and the Braves. Postema discusses the mindset behind making a proper call, the weeks of intensive training, ejecting problem players and managers, and the chaos mixed with the monotony of being on the road most of the year. Throughout, Postema relates her encounters with major league stars when they were just up-and-comers in the minors. The philosopher Jacques Barzun thought that "whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.