In the spirit of more robust self-promotion (by which I mean any self-promotion), I’ll be listing my occasional radio appearances for anybody in the appropriate local markets. I’ll be on ESPN 1420 Honolulu tomorrow with Bobby Curran at 9:33 a.m. PST. Sadly, it will be on the phone and not in studio. Those also unfortunate enough to be on the mainland can listen live here.
Month: June 2012
Pine Tar Madness Grips Nation’s Capital!
What more fitting place than our nation’s capital for baseball’s latest incident involving high crimes and espionage, which we might as well call Pine Tar-gate right from the start because, well, somebody had to do it.
At one end of last night’s shenanigans was Rays reliever Joel Perralta, supplier of pine tar; at the other was Nationals manager Davey Johnson, who didn’t much care for the extra edge the substance may have afforded the opposing pitcher.
When Peralta came in to pitch the bottom of the eighth, Johnson asked plate ump Tim Tschida to check his glove. And with that, the right-hander was ejected before he even threw a pitch, for what Tschida later said was a “significant amount” of pine tar—a prelude to a likely 10-game suspension. On his way off the field, Peralta tipped his cap toward the visitors’ dugout, a sarcastic display that he later phrased in a Washington Post report as “Good for them.” (Watch it here.)
The moment held intrigue on several levels. One is the fact that the pitcher not only played for the Nationals, but absolutely blossomed for them, as well. At age 34, Peralta went from ERAs of 5.98 (with Kansas City in 2008) and 6.20 (with Colorado in ’09) to a splendid 2.02 mark for Washington in 2010. That season he led the team in WHIP, hits-allowed-per-nine-innings and strikeout-to-walk ratio.
We may now know the reason. Somebody in the Nationals organization obviously had inside information they were willing to share about Peralta’s extracurricular habits; on the coaching staff alone, Nationals bench coach Randy Knorr served as the team’s bullpen coach in 2010, and first base coach Trent Jewett managed Peralta in the minor leagues that same season.
Were either of these people—the Nationals insider who dropped a dime on Peralta, or the manager who was willing to exploit it—playing within the boundaries of the unwritten rules? The short answer is no, but comes with the caveat that Johnson clearly doesn’t care.
For proof of this, look no further than Game 3 of the 1988 National League Championship Series, when Johnson—then managing the Mets—asked the umps to check Dodgers reliever Jay Howell. Like Peralta 24 years later, pine tar was found on the laces of the right-hander’s glove. (Darryl Strawberry said that the extreme break on Howell’s pitches tipped Johnson off, but other sources fingered Mets minor league manager Tucker Ashford, who had played against Howell some years earlier.)
Unlike Tuesday’s game, that move appeared to be tactical; Johnson waited until Howell was trying to protect a 4-3, eighth-inning lead, with a full count on leadoff hitter Kevin McReynolds. Howell was summarily ejected, and his replacement, Alejandro Pena, quickly served up ball four, helping ignite a five-run Mets rally.
The Nationals organization also has a history with the topic. In 2005, then-manager Frank Robinson had umpires—oddly, Tschida was behind the plate in that game, as well—check Angels reliever Brendan Donnelly. He was tipped off by his outfielder, Jose Guillen, who had recently left Anaheim under acrimonious terms.
“There’s etiquette and there’s lack of etiquette,” said Donnely at the time, in a Washington Post report. Robinson’s behavior, he said, was “the latter.” Angels manager Mike Scioscia was furious, and threatened to “undress” Nationals pitchers in response. His reaction was not so far removed from that of Rays skipper Joe Maddon—who happened to be Scioscia’s bench coach at the time.
Maddon was peeved enough yesterday to order a retaliatory examination of his own; at the manager’s request, Tschida checked Washington pitcher Ryan Mattheus a half-inning after tossing Peralta, and found nothing amiss.
“Heads up,” Maddon sarcastically told reporters after the game, according to a MASN report, as he wiped his unblemished desktop with a paper towel. “The desk is a little sticky right there.”
His follow-up comments were pointed.
“Insider trading right there,” he said. “It’s bush. It’s bogus, man. That’s way too easy right there. If you had done some really good police work and noticed something, that’s different. But that’s way too easy. That was set up on a tee for them.”
Much of Madden’s disconcert concerns the substance in question. Pine tar is as benign a material as can be illegally found on a ballfield; it is so common that a bag of its powdered form, rosin, is kept atop every major league mound.
Unlike lubricants such as Vaseline or K-Y Jelly, which increase a pitch’s movement by decreasing friction as the ball rolls off a pitcher’s fingers—in effect, allowing it to squirt out rather than roll, with minimal backspin—pine tar adds tack. It’s primarily used by pitchers to get a feel for the ball on cold, wet nights, but—as may have been the case with Peralta, who was pitching in near-70-degree swelter—it can also add snap to a breaking ball.
Said 1997 AL Cy Young Award winner Jack McDowell: “The only [illegal substance] I ever saw was pine tar, and I guarantee 80 percent of the pitchers still use it.”
Apparently, Maddon agrees.
“You’re going to see brand new gloves throughout the major leagues, starting tomorrow—pitchers on every Major League ballclub,” he said after the game, suggesting that pitchers everywhere will be inspired by Tuesday’s events to lay low for a while.
“It’s kind of a common practice—people have done this for years,” he said. “To point one guy out because he had pitched here a couple of years ago, there was some common knowledge based on that. I thought it was cowardly. . . . It was kind of a (expletive) move. I like that word. (Expletive) move right there.”
Ultimately, Maddon is right: If Johnson wanted to play by the unwritten rules, he would either have ignored the pine tar on Peralta’s glove or handled the situation in a far less obvious manner. It’s a stretch to think that having the pitcher tossed even served to level the playing field, because it’s likely that both teams have one or more pitchers who search beyond the rulebook for a similar edge. (“Before you start throwing rocks,” said Maddon to Johnson, through the press, “understand where you live.”)
The standard bearer for Code-based reactions in this category is Tony La Russa, who, when confronted with the fact that Tigers pitcher Kenny Rogers clearly had a clump of pine tar on his left palm during the 2006 World Series, opted against having the pitcher checked—which would have almost certainly led to ejection and suspension—instead requesting only that the umpires make the pitcher wash his hands.
La Russa’s comment at the time: “I said, ‘I don’t like this stuff, let’s get it fixed. If it gets fixed, let’s play the game.’ . . . I detest any B.S. that gets in the way of competition.”
Johnson nailed his man on Tuesday, but it’s easy to feel like a touch too much of La Russa’s B.S. got in the way of Tampa Bay’s 5-4 victory. Then again, it is Washington D.C., a city whose political culture appears to have been built on the stuff.
Update (6-18): Johnson thinks Maddon is a “weird wuss.”
Update (6-20): Peralta got eight games.
The Pros and Cons of Putting History First
Jay Schreiber of the New York Times raised an interesting question yesterday: Did Mets manager Terry Collins do the game a service by keeping his infield back with a runner on third and one out in a game New York led, 9-0, in the ninth inning over Tampa Bay?
The mitigating detail: R.A. Dickey hadn’t allowed a run in 32 2/3 innings, and while the knuckleballer wasn’t exactly approaching Orel Hersheiser’s record 59 consecutive scoreless frames, it was at least close enought to contemplate the possibilities.
Collins, however, was adhering to the Code—he claimed as much after the game—playing specifically not to stifle the opponent during a blowout with an unnecessary display of superiority, and happy to give up a run for a chance at an out. Sure enough, an infield out led to a run and the end of the streak.
Schreiber’s question: “Would Collins have kept the infield back in that situation and allowed Dickey’s streak to end on a simple grounder to short [had Dickey been at 52 or 53 innings instead of 32 2/3?]
The answer is, probably not, and justifiably so; in many situations through history, a player’s chance at greatness has trumped the unwritten rules. From The Baseball Codes:
Properly dealing with records—either one’s own or someone else’s— has long been a part of the Code. It’s why Yankees outfielder Tommy Henrich laid down a curiously timed ninth-inning bunt to avoid a possible double play, assuring Joe DiMaggio another chance to extend his hitting streak in 1941. (DiMaggio did.)
It’s also why, when Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson went into the final day of the 1959 season needing a hit in his first at-bat to push his average to .300, manager Casey Stengel informed him that since the Yankees didn’t have a single .300 hitter on the roster he’d be immediately removed from the game should it happen, to avoid falling below the mark in ensuing at-bats. It’s also why members of that day’s opponent, the Baltimore Orioles, took up the cause: Brooks Robinson informed Richardson that he’d be playing deep in case the hitter found appeal in bunting; pitcher Billy O’Dell offered to groove pitches; and catcher Joe Ginsberg verbally called for pitches instead of dropping down signs. Umpire Ed Hurley even got in on the act, offering that, if Richardson could “just make it close,” things would go his way. Said Richardson, “There couldn’t have been a more complete fix on.” (The fix might have been on, but it wasn’t complete. Richardson doubled in his first at-bat, refused Stengel’s entreaties to leave the game, went 2-for-3, and ended up at .301.)
There are also some examples regarding Hersheiser’s record, the one Dickey was not allowed to approach, and Don Drydale’s mark prior to Hersheiser breaking it. The Code adherents in these cases weren’t players, however, but umpires:
When Drysdale was on the precipice of breaking Carl Hubbell’s National League record for consecutive scoreless innings in 1968, he loaded the bases against the Giants with nobody out in the ninth inning. When he hit the next batter, Dick Dietz, it forced in a run and killed his streak at forty-four innings, four outs short of Hubbell’s mark. Plate umpire Harry Wendelstedt, however, ruled that Dietz made no effort to get out of the way of the pitch, and ordered him back to the plate with a full count, whereupon he flied out to shallow left field. Drysdale got out of the inning unscathed, in the process tying Doc White’s 1904 record with his fifth straight shutout, and eventually ran his streak to fifty-eight and two-thirds innings.
If Drysdale needed assistance from an umpire while playing the Giants to set his mark, so too did the successor to his record. In 1988, Orel Hershiser compiled forty-two consecutive shutout innings in pursuit of Drysdale’s standard before finally allowing a run on, of all things, a fielder’s choice—against the Giants, of course. Umpire Paul Runge, however, belatedly called hitter Ernie Riles out at first, ruling that baserunner Brett Butler went out of his way to interfere with Dodgers shortstop Alfredo Griffin on the play at second, ending the inning and wiping the run off the board. (“That slide was just like every other time I slid,” said an indignant Butler, who had indeed advanced directly into the bag.) Hershiser went on to run his scoreless-innings streak to fifty-nine. “It was a slow chopper, and there was no way they were going to get him at first no matter what I did, so what incentive did I have to try to take [Griffin] out?” said Butler. “A lot of times when records are in the balance like that, there’s no explaining some of the things that happen. People react in different ways.”
Ultimately, it would have been difficult to protest against Collins looking out for the interests of his pitcher in such a situation. His strategy would have had nothing to do with disrespecting the Rays, and everything to do with propping up R.A. Dickey.
Not much fault to find with that.
Baker-Lowe Feud Exposes Long-Seated Rift, Hints at Wild Accusations, Spurs Mutomboeque Finger Wag
While people are fixating on Dusty Baker‘s explosive charge that Derek Lowe may have been drinking at the ballpark four years ago, the first thing that jumped out at me from the newly rekindled feud between the two, which has just now grabbed headlines some four years after it allegedly started, was this: Managers still order their pitchers to retaliate?
Apparently, yes.
Sure, most expect to see it when appropriate and applaud when it happens, but from the hundreds of interviews I’ve done on the subject, the overwhelming sentiment is that direct orders in that regard are a thing of bygone eras.
Not according to Baker.
“I told [Reds starter Mat] Latos to buzz [Lowe] and make him feel uncomfortable,” he said to the Cleveland Plain Dealer about a moment in Wednesday’s game.
Come again?
Baker said specifically that while he didn’t order a drilling, he did instruct his pitcher to send an obvious message. Suffice it to say, that message was received. Following Latos’ brushback, Lowe pointed his bat toward the Reds dugout, where he saw Baker wagging his finger at him. (Lowe initially thought it was a signal of denial; Baker corrected him by telling the Plain Dealer that “[Dikembe] Mutombo didn’t shake his finger to say, ‘I didn’t have anything to do with it.’ That means, ‘Don’t mess with me or my team.’ That’s what that means. So he better learn the sign lanugage.”)
A half-inning later, Lowe drilled Brandon Phillips in response. (Watch it here.) As an apparently amused Phillips grinned toward his dugout, plate ump Paul Nauert responded by warning both benches.
The origins of this feud are, at this point, pure speculation. Lowe offered only vague details.
“This goes back to my last year with the Dodgers [in 2008],” he said in a Cincinnati Enquirer report. “[Baker] made up some story. A lot of people got involved. People almost got fired over it. You can go ask him right now and he’ll say he has no idea what you’re talking about.”
Baker suggested that Lowe’s drilling of Joey Votto in 2009 was motivated by the mystery circumstance. In response to the pitcher saying he had no respect for him, Baker said this, again from the Enquirer: “Man, I don’t care. A lot of people don’t respect me. He don’t respect himself. The word was whatever he did and said probably there was a good chance he was drinking at the ballpark and he don’t remember what he said or what he did. OK.”
Baker and his team had a chance to retaliate for Votto’s drilling in ’09—Lowe, then with Atlanta, faced the Reds once more that season, and emerged unscathed. (The final score of that follow-up game was 3-1, Cincinnati, a margin perhaps too thin for Baker to be settling scores. Then again, a brushback like Latos ultimately delivered hardly matters in that regard.)
Either because it’s personal and not team-related, or because Lowe handled things sufficiently on his own, there was no follow-up action from the Indians when the teams played on Thursday.
Baker has been known to possess a long memory when it comes to this type of thing; in an interview for The Baseball Codes, he said, “You can’t carry stuff over unless you’ve got a long history with a guy.” This certainly qualifies as long history, but without details there’s little point even in speculating about the cause.
In the end, I keep coming back to the same question: Managers really order retaliation from their pitchers in 2012? Like many of the details in this particular drama, it merits further exploration. Ultimately, of course, we’re only going to find out as much as people are willing to talk about, which has already been more than we’re used to. Stay tuned.
Cain Conquers Code, Overcomes Slew of Jinxes to Reach Perfection
There are some lines Bruce Bochy is willing to cross, and some that he’s not.
Case in point: Matt Cain’s perfect game Wednesday night. Bochy was willing to make some small changes: Emmanuel Burriss replaced Ryan Theriot at second base in the sixth, and in the seventh, Joaquin Arias slid from shortstop to third base, replacing Pablo Sandoval, with Brandon Crawford inserted at shortstop.
The Burriss substitution, said Bochy after the game, was aimed at giving playing time to one player and rest to another during a 10-0 blowout. The seventh-inning switches, however, were made with perfection in mind, Bochy putting the best defense possible behind Cain. Sure enough, the first batter of the eighth, J.D. Martinez, hit a slow roller to third, which Arias charged, gloved cleanly, and threw on a line to nip the runner. And with two outs in the ninth, Arias fielded a sharply hit ball down the line and made the long throw in plenty of time to preserve Cain’s perfection. (Watch it here. Full highlights here.)
“We went against every unwritten rule in the book, I know, but Boch and I just thought we had to have our best defense in there at the end, and it worked out,” said Giants bench coach Ron Wotus. “Panda [Sandoval] would have a tough time making those two plays as easily as Arias made them.”
When it came to warming up a pitcher, however, Bochy was significantly more sly. With a comfortable lead, he wanted a reliever ready should Cain—whose pitch count through seven was 103—give up a hit. The manager was cognizant, however, of the emotional toll the sight of bullpen activity can take on a nerve-wracked starter, so he had reliever Shane Loux warming up “down underneath,” either in the batting cage or in the tunnel below the stands.
“We had somebody ready,” he said. “You couldn’t see him, but he was there.”
Far less tactful was first baseman Brandon Belt, who looked up from his seat in the dugout in the seventh inning, and was startled to see Cain in front of him.
“I sat down and Cainer just stopped and stared at me,” Belt told CSN Bay Area‘s Andrew Baggarly, referencing the superstition that nothing in the dugout order can change under such circumstances. “Yeah, I guess everything was OK until I sat in his seat.”
As if to follow suit, not only was the Giants television broadcast crew more than happy to reference the no-hitter, but prior to the ninth inning showed a “Giants No-Hit History” graphic, featuring each of San Francisco’s five previous no-hitters.
Just goes to show that dominant pitching trumps jinxes every time.
Update (6-15-12): Cain’s family is full of Code adherents.
Wilson ‘Bummed’ by CarGo’s Bunt
Just a few days back, Dee Gordon tried to bunt for what would have been his team’s first hit against the Mariners.
Because it was only the fourth inning, and because speed is such an integral part to Gordon’s game, and because Seattle led only 1-0, none of the Mariners gave it much thought.
The same couldn’t be said regarding Carlos Gonzalez, who last Friday—the same day as Gordon’s effort—bunted for Colorado’s first hit against the Angels. The circumstances were remarkably similar: It was the fourth inning, it was a tack he regularly uses (he’d already had one bunt single this year, and tallied six last season), and his team trailed only 2-0.
The primary difference: The attitude of the pitcher he was facing.
“Anytime a guy like him drops a bunt down, it’s a little shocking,” said Angels starter C.J. Wilson in an MLB.com report. “I was bummed about that from a competitive standpoint. I guess he just wanted to get on base.”
Sure, Gonzalez is known for his power more than his speed, which in turn causes third basemen to play deeper than they might for somebody like Gordon. Ultimately, however, if there’s a defensive hole to exploit, one can hardly fault a hitter for trying.
“He was throwing nasty pitches, so why would you take that away from me?” Gonzalez said. “That’s part of my game. . . . We were only down by two runs. Maybe in a different situation, I would try to swing the bat because I know how hard it is for pitchers to give up the first hit with a bunt. But I wanted to get my team going and he was dominating.”
The Angels won, 7-2, and there was no retaliation against Gonzalez. Using Wilson’s own vernacular, “bummed” doesn’t necessarily mean “angry,” which may have had to do with the fact that Gonzalez didn’t exactly break up a game for the ages—CarGo’s was one of five hits Wilson gave up on the day.
Then again, the pitcher did see fit to address the matter after the game, even while he should have been basking in an outstanding (one run over eight innings) performance.
Seems there’s just no pleasing some people.
Spit-Gate Underway: Did Valverde Hock? More Importantly: Does it Matter?
Well, it sure looked like Jose Valverde spat onto the ball—or at least into his glove, which contained the ball—in Sunday’s game against Cincinnati. A clip distributed (over and over again via Twitter) by a Reds fan named Justin Tooley shows Valverde, on the mound facing Devin Mesoraco, pursing his lips and doing something that looks an awful lot like spitting into his glove.
Chatter around the Internet concerns the possibility of Major League Baseball taking action against him. The quick response: No chance.
The first reason for this is plausible deniability. Implausible as it might seem, Valverde might simply have been sneezing. There’s also the fact that his ensuing pitch was a high-and-tight four-seam fastball, not the typical diver that pitchers look for from spitters. As Yahoo’s Kevin Kaduk noted, “Valverde is well known for throwing a split-fingered fastball, which makes you wonder why he passed on throwing that pitch if he did indeed spit on the ball.”
Writer/pitcher Dirk Hayhurst (who’s graced these pages before) weighed in on his blog with the notion that spitting on the baseball is, in the pantheon of ball-doctoring methodology, “like trying to kill an antelope with a sharp stick.” He also ran down the assortment of goops found in bullpen bags across the land:
Sun screen combined with rosin make for on the fly finger Fixodent. Firm Grip, found in every training room, makes the ball hang from your finger tips. Well rubbed in shaving gel gives a little extra tack, but no to so much that your hands suck up dirt and dust like chicken getting battered for deep fry.
Vasilene does the opposite. The ball slides out of your hand like a splitter and drops significantly more. If Vaseline is to advanced for you, try Skin Lube, it’s the gunk trainers stick under tape wraps so players don’t chafe while playing. It doesn’t gleam like Vasilene so you can smear it under your hat bill with out worry.
Umps really watching you? Try Kramergesic or Red Hot. Burns a little, but it also leaves a nice slime in it’s wake. If you get asked about it, you can say it’s medicinal. Plus, a mixture of lube and sweat works far better than spit or snot . . . Unless you prefer snot, in which case, rub a little Red Hot in your nose and get it running good. Just don’t get it in your eyes or you’ll leave the game in tears regardless of your performance.
Heck, in the case of Ted Lilly, it wasn’t even about substances he used, but where he (allegedly) stood atop the mound. With all this stuff at his disposal, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for a pitcher to expectorate in obvious ways as the center of attention on a baseball diamond. (Then again, very little about Jose Valverde actually does make sense.)
If you’re wondering whether any of the pitchers who utilize those methods have been caught, the answer is a resounding yes—a lot of them do it, and it’s impossible that they could all avoid detection. Their collective penalty, outside of the rogue moundsman every decade or so whose viscous pursuits are so obvious as to leave no choice but punishment once they’re discovered : virtually nothing. Baseball has avoided punitive action with far more damning evidence in hand than Valverde just offered up. Take Red Munger, a pitcher for the Cardinals in the 1940s. From The Baseball Codes:
Munger was known by opponents and umpires alike to load up balls with tobacco juice. After umpire Larry Goetz called the second strike of an at-bat on one of Munger’s doctored pitches, the hitter complained that the pitch had been a spitter. “Yes it was,” Cardinals catcher Joe Garagiola recalled Goetz saying. “Strike two.”
A cheating pitcher may simply be a hornets’ nest that most umpires don’t appear inclined to poke. For something more recent, there’s this, also from The Baseball Codes:
In April 1973, Yankees outfielder Bobby Murcer exploded to the press after facing Cleveland’s greaseball king Gaylord Perry in the pitcher’s second start of the season, yelling: “Just about everything he throws is a spitter. . . . The more he knows you’re bothered by him throwing it the better he is against you. He’s got the stuff behind his ear and on his arm and on his chest. He puts it on each inning. I picked up the balls and they’re so greasy you can’t throw them.” Murcer went so far as to call commissioner Bowie Kuhn “gutless” for refusing to respond—and this was after the outfielder had recorded a three-hit game against Perry. When the pitcher was confronted with Murcer’s accusations, however, he said that Murcer hit “fastballs and sliders,” not spitballs. It would have been a more credible excuse had Perry been on the same page as his catcher, Dave Duncan, who in a separate contrived denial said that Murcer had hit “off-speed stuff.”
To further the argument, The New York Times hired an unnamed Yankees pitcher to chart Perry’s every pitch throughout the game, marking those he thought to be spitballs. When the resulting pitch chart was compared with a replay of the game, the Times noted that, before every pitch identified as a spitter by the Yankees operative, Perry tugged at the inside of his left sleeve with his right (pitching) hand—an action he did not take for the rest of his repertoire. Yankees second baseman Horace Clarke, according to the chart, struck out on a spitter that, on replay, was seen to drop at least a foot. In the fourth inning, Thurman Munson asked to see the ball twice during his at-bat—during which, said the chart, Perry threw four spitters. . . .
Partly in reaction to the uproar Perry caused, a rule was implemented in 1974 that removed the mandate for hard proof in an umpire’s spitball warning, saying that peculiar movement on a pitch provided ample evidence. It didn’t take long—all of six innings into the season—before Perry earned his first warning under the new rule. Not that it mattered; by the end of the season he had won twenty-one games, was voted onto the All-Star team, finished fourth in the Cy Young balloting, and was thrown out of exactly zero games for doctoring baseballs.
In fact, Perry wasn’t docked for throwing a spitter until 1982, when he was 43 years old and in his 21st big league season—eight years after his autobiography, Me and the Spitter, was published.
Hayhurst made the excellent point that some of the greatest pitchers of all time cheated. Greg Maddux’s name has come up repeatedly during the course of this particular conversation. Nolan Ryan, Don Drysdale and Whitey Ford either admitted to or were regularly accused of scuffing balls or loading them up. When Commissioner Ford Frick lobbied to have the spitball re-legalized in 1955, Pee Wee Reese responded with the classic comment, “Restore the spitter? When did they stop throwing it?”
So even if you don’t afford Valverde the benefit of the doubt; even if you’re outraged that a pitcher would resort to such underhanded tactics; try to get over it. You’ll be receiving no satisfaction from baseball’s response—if baseball responds at all.
Update (7-12-12): Valverde says he was just wiping sweat from his face.
Update (7-13-12): MLB has spoken with the Tigers, with no apparent ramifications.
No-No-No-No-No-No in Seattle Leaves at Least a Couple People Confused
Remember all those conversations people were having just last week about whether one could justifiably pull a pitcher in the middle of his own no-hitter? Sometimes it’s a moot point.
On Friday, Seattle’s Kevin Milwood tossed six no-hit innings against the Dodgers, then strained his groin while warming up prior to the seventh. Five Mariners relievers followed with three more innings of no-hit ball. (It was the 10th combined no-hitter in big league history; the latest—Houston’s defeat of the Yankees in 2003—also had six, and also had a starter, Roy Oswalt, depart early after an injury.)
Several noteworthy slices of Code cropped up in the process. One of the most popular refrains from those decrying the dreaded no-hitter jinx stipulation, which mandates that the feat must not be spoken about until it is completed, is that there’s no way a pitcher in the middle of a no-hitter has somehow failed to realize that he’s in the middle of a no-hitter.
Improbably, though, Seattle reliever Tom Wilhelmsen failed to realize exactly that. Wilhelmsen, who closed out the game for the Mariners, was eventually informed of the circumstances by his catcher.
“I told him, ‘Man, you threw a no-hitter!'” said Jesus Montero, in an ESPN report. “And he didn’t know! Unbelievable.”
Wilhelmsen tried to add some nuance to the claim. “Well, I mean, I knew what was going on,” he said. “But no, I have a brain fart every so often and just focused so hard on getting one thing done. It’s not like you forget, but it’s like you put it off to the side. And then it’s like, ‘Holy cow, we just did it,’ and Montero is in my arms.”
To be fair, five pitching changes can distract from the execution of a fairly unique feat; Wilhelmsen wasn’t the only one who lost track of things.
“Coming into the ninth, it wasn’t really on my mind . . .” said Seattle shortstop Brendan Ryan, who entered in the ninth as a defensive replacement. “It kind of took five seconds or so to sink in. ‘Wait a minute. Wait a minute. There were no hits. That’s a no-hitter!'”
That said, not everybody was so clueless. Reliever Stephen Pryor (who was credited with the victory after pitching to all of one batter recording all of one out), told the Seattle Times that, Wilhelmsen apparently aside, they were aware of it in the bullpen. “We knew, but we weren’t talking about it,” he said. “We didn’t want to jinx it.”
Someone who very clearly didn’t mind jinxing it was Dodgers shortstop Dee Gordon, who tried to bunt for a hit in the fourth inning. While some take this topic—breaking up a no-hitter with a bunt—very seriously, Gordon has facts on his side. For one, it was only the fourth inning—far to early to consider the deed sacrosanct, even for the likes of Bob Brenly. For another, speed makes up nearly the entirety of Gordon’s offensive game; beating out bunts is what he does, so to assume he’d suddenly table one of his strengths in a close game is far from reasonable. The score was only 1-0, so even if Gordon had tried it in the eighth, he would likely have not drawn much protest from the Mariners.
No word yet about whether Seattle players took it upon themselves to avoid all six pitchers in the dugout for fear of the mighty jinx. Seems like a tall order.
Unwritten Rules 101: The Things One Learns in College
Baseball’s unwritten rules are frequently the domain of the major league. In the minors, players are working on skills more so than etiquette, and at lower levels than that most pitchers lack the type of control that can indicate intention behind a hit batter.
That doesn’t prevent issues from cropping up, however.
Last week, a Stony Brook University player stole a base in the eighth inning of a regional tournament game against Miami, while his team led 9-2.
How to respond to such an action? Stony Brook coach Matt Senk addressed it directly, at the beginning of his postgame press conference.
“I’d like to apologize to coach Jim Morris and his fine Miami team for the miscommunication that took place,” Senk said in a Newsday report. “I felt compelled to take action and pull [the offending] player. . . . We were not interested in stealing at that point. We were going to go station to station. We have a sign to not steal. [The runner] missed the sign.”
It was a heck of an opening statement after a convincing 10-2 win over a high-profile opponent. Senk is in his 22nd season as coach at Stony Brook, and is obviously big into teachable moments.
The Sea Dogs went on to win three of their next four games—by the book, it seems safe to assume—to move on to the best-of-three Baton Rouge Super Regional against LSU on Friday.
On the Dreaded Power of the No-Hitter Jinx
When A’s starter Jarrod Parker gave up an eighth-inning single to Michael Young Monday, it saved his manager some headaches. Parker is a rookie, had already exceeded his closely monitored pitch count, and, until Young reached safely, had not yet given up a hit to the Rangers.
Bob Melvin had already told himself that the eighth would be Parker’s final frame, regardless of the outcome. He was prepared to do what Terry Collins wouldn’t, just days earlier: capsize a no-hitter in progress.
Because it never came to pass, however, and because intentions are far less fun to criticize or defend than actions, we’ll turn our attention to Ray Ratto of CSNBay Area. Never one to subscribe to superstition (or even buy it off the newsstand), Ratto set about needling those on the collective edge of their seat during Parker’s gem.
In the seventh inning, he took some notice of folks on Twitter trying to draw attention to Parker’s feat without actually coming out and saying it, for fear of the dreaded jinx. From Ratto’s ensuing column:
Superstition lives in baseball, at least among the devout and experienced. Well, I am a man of science, in that I believe in evolution for some people. So I blurted out in response to one such devotee of tradition, “You mean JARROD PARKER’S NO-HITTER THROUGH SEVEN INNINGS? IS THAT WHAT YOU’RE TRYING NOT TO REFER TO?”
Did he jinx anything? Parker gave up his first hit two pitches later.
For those of you unfamiliar with Ratto’s style from his years at the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, his response to the ensuing fallout paints a fairly accurate picture:
So it was my fault, except for the following things. Jinxes don’t exist, and superstitions are idiotic. There are no baseball gods minding the store for etiquette violations, and if there were baseball gods, they still haven’t fully explained the color line to my satisfaction, so to hell with them anyway. Plus, Parker wasn’t reading my Twitter feed at the time, plus nobody else in the dugout was, plus, they already knew very well he had a no-hitter, plus shut up.
Other than that, yes, it was my fault.
In Ratto’s mind, even if there was a jinx, he should be doubly thanked for sparing Melvin the fallout from having to remove a pitcher from his own no-hitter.
Seems like perfect logic from here.
The Baseball Codes 