Long, Wet Summer

Baseball's last legal spitball was thrown by Burleigh Arland Grimes of the New York Yankees on Sept. 20, 1934. Now 74 and a gentleman farmer in Trenton, Mo., Grimes has long since forgotten 1) to whom he threw the ball, and 2) what happened. Calvin Lee Koonce has no such problem. He clearly recalls throwing his last spitball to Johnny Callison of the Philadelphia Phillies, who grounded into a force play. Koonce's memory may be due to the fact that he is only 26, still pitches for the New York Mets--and threw his last spitter just the other day.

No regulation in baseball is more flagrantly flouted than Rule 8.02, which forbids pitchers to apply any foreign substance to the ball--specifically including spit--on penalty of ten days' suspension. The idea, besides making the game somewhat more sanitary, was to give batters an edge by eliminating the exaggerated "drop" or "break" (up to six inches more than normal) that pitchers can achieve by wetting the ball. And for a while, most pitchers did seem to abide by the edict. But charity has its limits. Experts estimate that today, anywhere from 25% to 50% of all big-league pitchers throw the spitter, and that number includes many of the biggest names in the game.

Why Not? "Spitball," actually, is a generic term. Sweat performs as well as spittle, and all a pitcher has to do is mop his brow on a steamy afternoon to make the ball misbehave. Gaylord Perry, who won 21 games for the San Francisco Giants in 1966, is more theatrical: he uses his fingers as a tongue depressor. Detroit's Dennis McLain (1967 record: 16-14) and California's

Jim McGlothlin (10-5) are salivary too, but John Wyatt, No. 1 relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, coats the ball with Vaseline. "Wyatt," says Joe Pepitone of the New York Yankees, "carries so much Vaseline on him that if he slid into second base he'd keep right on going to the leftfield fence." Dean Chance (17-9) of the Minnesota Twins has been accused of "loading" with both saliva and stickum, but he also has plenty of legal stuff on the ball: last week he pitched his second no-hitter in a month--the first was a rain-shortened, five-inning affair--to beat Cleveland 2-1 and boost the Twins into the American League lead.

Although spitball pitchers traditionally feign innocence, a few finally have begun to confess their guilt. "I've got moist hands," admits the Chicago White Sox's Bob Locker. And the Mets' Koonce asks: "Why shouldn't I say I throw one? A lot of guys know I do." Including, of course, the umpires, who rarely enforce Rule 8.02--because, they claim, it is unenforceable. "You may know a pitch was a spitter--but how do you prove it?" shrugs Cal Hubbard, the American League's supervisor of umpires, and one of his subordinates says: "We don't bother the pitchers as long as they don't embarrass us."

If a batter insists, the plate umpire will examine the ball--but by then the evidence has dried up or been wiped away by the catcher. In one game at Boston, visiting hitters complained so often that Red Sox pitchers were doctoring the ball that Umpire Hank Soar called for it, examined it carefully, found it clean--and in a gesture of resignation spat on it himself before firing it back to the mound.

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