Lena Blackburne's Baseball Rubbing Mud

Any professional baseball game, from the Major Leagues down to independent ball, will have a bit of the Delaware River present. More specifically, mud from somewhere along the Delaware River. Only Lena Blackburne and his descendants know the location and exact ingredients of the mud, but it’s been rubbed on baseballs since 1939.

Brand new baseballs are too shiny and glossy out of the packaging, thus Rule 3.01 (c): “The umpire shall inspect the baseballs and ensure that they are regulation baseballs and that they are properly rubbed so that the gloss is removed.” A properly rubbed ball makes it easier for the pitcher to grip, and some claim that it makes it harder for hitters to pick up the rotation of the ball.

Throughout the 1920’s and 30’s, balls were rubbed with a water and dirt combo from the field, tobacco juice, shoe polish or other like substances. These didn’t work all that well, but nothing changed until 1938, when umpire Harry Geisel complained about the sorry state of rubbing material for baseballs to Lena Blackburne, who was the third base coach for the Philadelphia Athletics at the time.

That offseason, Blackburne went home to Burlington County in New Jersey and dug up some mud from somewhere along the Delaware River (the exact location, to this day, is a closely guarded secret). The next spring he presented a can of “Lena Blackburne’s Baseball Rubbing Mud” to Geisel, and word spread rapidly through the League. By the 1950’s, all levels of professional baseball were rubbing baseballs with Blackburne’s unique mud. Imitators have come and gone, but no mixture, natural or artificial, comes close to comparing to the mud from the streams of the Delaware.

What started as a simple way to make a little money on the side for Blackburne turned into a full fledged industry, and his unique contribution to the game earned Backburne and his “Lena Blackburne’s Baseball Rubbing Mud” a mention in the Baseball Hall of Fame, as well as a place in the umpire room of every clubhouse in professional baseball.

Sources:

http://baseballrubbingmud.com/

Morris, Peter A Game of Inches: The Game on the Field

2009 Official Baseball Rules

Bonus:

Article on Baltimore Orioles' umpire assistant Ernie Tyler, who's been prepping baseballs for games since 1960:

http://www.pressboxonline.com/story.cfm?id=3844

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History of the hidden ball trick

It all depends on who you ask. It’s a bush league move on a player’s part that goes against every meaning of sportsmanship. Or, it’s a smart move to take advantage of an opponent’s wrong step or a lapse in judgment.

It’s been used from the diamonds of the Major Leagues, to high school games, to wiffleball contests on the sandlot. Oh, and at the Major League level it’s about as rare as a no-hitter. It’s the hidden ball trick. Since the inception of the National League in 1876, there have been 263 no-no’s thrown in baseball history. Only 232 times has the hidden ball trick been verified to work during a game

So what is the hidden ball trick? There are many variations of trying to trick a runner off base: faking a throw back to the pitcher, pretending to miss the cutoff throw, and various other ways that usually involve theatrics and trickery on the part of the fielder. A true hidden ball trick typically has the fielder hide the ball, often in his mitt, and attempt to convince the runner through his body language that the pitcher has the ball. Because of this, the pitcher has to be in on the trick too. When the runner takes his lead off of the base, the fielder tags the confused (and embarrassed) runner and shows the ball to the umpire, much to the delight and amusement of everyone (except the runner...and probably his manager…)

The hidden ball trick has been a part of the game since the beginning. As mentioned above, there have been very few successful attempts of the trick recorded, but it’s been attempted throughout baseball history. Bill Coughlin even pulled the trick in the first inning of Game 2 of the 1907 World Series against the Cubs’ Jimmy Slagle. It’s still the only instance of the hidden ball trick working in the World Series. Coughlin gets the crown as king of the trick, have reputedly pulled it seven times successfully. On the more dubious side, Ozzie Guillen and Jack Martin (info on him here) are the only players to have been caught napping on the basepaths three times in their careers. (Also of note, Orlando Cepeda and Fred “Boner” Merkle alone can claim to have both fallen for the trick and pulled it successfully on someone else.)

It became much harder to trick the runners when the modern balk rules were put in place. The pitcher now cannot go near the rubber without the ball:

“Rule 8.05: If there is a runner, or runners, it is a balk when - (i) the pitcher, without having the ball, stands on or astride the pitchers plate or while off the plate, he feigns a pitch.”

This is mainly what makes the trick so rare; if a runner waits to lead off until the pitcher gets on the mound, the hidden ball trick is impossible. Thus, the trick is only feasible though both the craftiness and acting ability of the fielder and pitcher, and the laziness and inattentiveness of the runner.

The last time the trick worked? August 10, 2005. Mike Lowell of the Florida Marlins pulled it successfully for the second time in less than a year, this time against the Diamondback’s Luis Terrero. Here’s the account from the game recap:

"I looked to first to see if Tony Clark was going to advance, then I looked at third base," Lowell said. "Both guys had their heads down so I just held onto the ball to see what would happen."

Despite the absence of any signal from Lowell, (Todd) Jones -- who said he hadn't seen the play since 1986, when he was in high school - understood what his teammate was up to.

"When I didn't get the ball, I figured it out by the process of elimination," Jones said. "I just walked around and tried to stall. I was running out of things to do. I was going to touch my toes."

Just as Jones was getting ready to give up the charade, Terrero took his lead off third base. Lowell sauntered over and tagged the stunned baserunner, who was immediately called out by third base umpire Ed Rapuano, drawing a roar of approval from the crowd of 20,443.

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Why is 100 pitches now the "magic number?"

Tim Kurkjian wrote a fantastic article for ESPN the Magazine a few days ago that deals with the evolution of the pitch count. It talks about the history behind pitch counts, why we've become so obsessed with them, why they've become important, and how 100 pitches came to be the magic number starters should throw.

Click here to read the article: Baseball's Magic Number: 100

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The history of the perfect game

Perfection. It’s what we all strive for, isn’t it? We’re all told practice makes perfect, but for most things in life, perfection cannot be reached; just something to attain to. However, Mark Buehrle proved today that baseball is one of the few things in life where, rare though it may be, perfection can be obtained. Buehrle threw the 18th perfect game (16th in the modern era) in baseball’s storied history for the Chicago White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field against the high-powered Tampa Bay Rays lineup. Perfect game. Even the name inspires a bit of awe. It's one of those accomplishments in sports where the only appropriate reaction seems to be a reflective step back and a tip of the cap.

Where did the term “perfect game” come from? Well, as is the case with most things in the formative days of baseball history, the term had at least a start with Henry Chadwick. He began to use the term “model games” to refer to contests with few hits, errors and runs scored. This term found its way into the papers, as the Chicago Tribune referenced John Ward’s perfect game on June 17, 1880 a few days later as being “called a ‘model’ game - that is, a game equally devoid of base hits and errors.”

So what goes into a perfect game? It’s not an official part of the rulebook, but it’s defined well by Paul Dickson in The New Baseball Dictionary: "A no-hitter in which no opposing player reaches first base, either by a base hit, base on balls, hit batter, or fielding error; i.e., the pitcher or pitchers retire all twenty-seven opposing batters in order." In a nut shell: 27 up, 27 down.

As far as history goes, the first perfect game that we know about was thrown by James “Pud” Galvin on August 17, 1876 at a tournament in Ionia, Michigan. It didn’t attract too much attention, though the feat is made even more incredible when you factor in his other game that same day. Oh yes, Galvin’s perfect game was his second start of the day; his first was another no-hitter where the only baserunners reached on account of errors. So he came a few errors within doing twice in a day what had never been done before.

Now there’s a reason Galvin’s perfect outing didn’t attract too much fanfare. In 1845, the first compiled rules of baseball were laid down on paper by the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York City. Rule Nine states: “The ball must be pitched - not thrown - for the bat.” The rule simply means the pitcher’s job was to let the batter hit the ball (and “pitching” the ball meant throwing it essentially underhand, without bending the elbow; think of a softball pitch today). While Galvin’s perfect game was 30 years after these rules were outlined, the idea that the pitcher would try to get the batter out was still a relatively new concept, and one that had some opposition at that.

It would be almost four years later when the first Major League perfect game would be thrown by Lee Richmond on June 12, 1880. Pitching for the Worcester Worchesters (quite the original name...can you imagine the Chicago Chicagos or the Detroit Detroits today? Neither can I.), his perfect game was kept intact when a single to right was erased when right fielder Lon Knight threw out the hitter at first base.

Below is a list of all 18 perfect games in Major League History (click to expand)























Notes: Don Larsen's perfect game is still the only no-hitter or perfect game pitched in the playoffs or World Series.

The list is courtesy of baseball-almanac.com. The page (linked below) also contains the box score for every perfect game pitched, as well as other relevant information such as near misses, “unofficial” perfect games, pitch counts for the pitchers in these perfect games, and so on. http://www.baseball-almanac.com/pitching/piperf.shtml


Sources:
Morris, A Game of Inches (Vol. 1)
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/pitching/piperf.shtml
Dickinson, The New Baseball Dictionary

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Why is it called home plate?

Every journey needs a starting place. Where better to start than home? If you think about it, the game does seem to revolve around home plate. Balls and strikes are called based on its size, pitches are thrown over it, and batters touch it last to score a run. You can’t “touch ‘em all” without home plate, a called strike three doesn’t exist without something to determine what it’s called, and a grand slam doesn’t mean anything until all four runners step on home. So what’s with the name, why isn’t it home base? And let’s be honest, it doesn’t look anything like a plate.

First things first: why not home base? Well, that’s because it originally wasn’t a “base,” it was a plate. Literally. Home was an iron plate in the ground, thus the name. In fact, the rules in the 1857 called for a round plate of iron, as the New York Herald reported in 1859: “The home base is marked by a flat circular iron plate, painted white.” So the only think connecting the appearance of home plate then and now was the fact that it was white.

In 1858, home plate became a 12”x12” square iron plate, still painted white. A few years later in 1872, the plate was rotated so the point faced the pitcher. The material became a problem when sliding became common in the 1880’s. Sliding into a soft bag wasn’t a big deal, but sliding on top of a raised piece of iron with sharp corners all of the sudden doesn’t sound like such a great idea. In 1885 the American Association prescribed a rubber “plate” instead of the old iron plate. A few years later when the various leagues consolidated their rule books, they decided to agree on a white, rubber 12”x12” square for home plate. It wasn’t a plate anymore, but the name stuck.

The last change was the shape, from a square to the familiar 5-sided pentagon of today. Before the 1900 season, the new shape was introduced with the flat part facing the pitcher. Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide from 1900 stated the reason was that it “enables the pitcher to see the width of base he has to throw the ball over better than before, and the umpire can judge called balls and strikes with less difficulty.” The new shape didn’t change the width of the strike zone at all, just made it easier for pitchers to see what they were aiming at and easier for umpires to make the calls (insert own joke about the eyesight of umpires here…). Credit for the new design is hard to place, but the best bet might be umpire Michael McMahon, who seemed to be given credit at the time. The only difference was that he felt the flat part should face the catcher, not the pitcher. So if it was in fact his idea, he’ll get the credit for the shape we see today, just not the orientation.

The shape was so good that the only change to home plate since the 1900 season was in 1936, when the rules specified the addition of beveled edges of the plate. The 2009 Official Rules of Major League Baseball give the exact specifics of home plate, relatively unchanged from the 1900 season:

"Home base shall be marked by a five-sided slab of whitened rubber. It shall be a 17 inch square with two of the corners removed so that one edge is 17 inches long, two adjacent sides are 8 1/2 inches and the remaining two sides are 12 inches and set at an angle to make a point. It shall be set in the ground with the point at the intersection of the lines extending from home base to first base and to third base; with the 17-inch edge facing the pitcher’s plate, and the two 12-inch edges coinciding with the first and third base lines. The top edges of home base shall be beveled and the base shall be fixed in the ground level with the ground surface.” (Rule 1.05)

Included is Diagram 2 from the 2009 Official Rules of Major League Baseball for reference:

Notes: When measuring the distance to the pitcher’s mound (60 ft, 6 in), 1st/3rd base (90 feet), or straight across to 2nd base (127 ft, 3 3/8 in), the back point of home plate is where the measurement starts.

Since all of home plate is in fair territory, a ball hit off of home is considered in fair territory.

Sources:

Morris, Game of Inches (Vol. 2)
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/stadium/baseball_field_construction.shtml
2009 Official Rules of Major League Baseball

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