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March 31, 2021 By: Mark Knudson

MLB “crackdown” pushes forward another solution that doesn’t have a problem

There are many among us who openly wonder if Rob Manfred actually likes baseball.

Sure, he’s the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. But does he really like the game?

Sometimes, when’s he offering up one dumb idea after another on how to fix what isn’t broken, you have to wonder if he’s just interested in the bottom line or if he actually enjoys watching the world’s best do their thing.

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I’m not going to waste space here going back over all of Manfred’s dumb ideas on how to “speed up the game” or make it appeal to a younger demographic with a short attention span. That’s been well documented. This time around, the focus is on the new “crackdown” that Manfred and MLB are reportedly moving ahead with in order to punish pitchers who aren’t doing anything except trying to get a grip.

This is another textbook example of MLB finding a solution that comes without a problem.

Allegedly – according to some in the MLB orbit – big league pitchers are getting away with “doctoring” the baseball with foreign substances — specifically pine tar. This is the same substance that hitters use to get a better grip on the bat. However, pitchers are forbidden from using it by rule. Many of us still aren’t sure why.

Guess what? They use it anyway, and everyone knows it. Pitchers, hitters, umpires, coaches…everyone. And no one cares!

I used pine tar for my entire big league career. I had a glove with black laces, and I would put the pine tar on one of those laces so I could touch it with my thumb and two fingers when I needed to get a better grip on the ball. It gave me some tackiness and allowed me to not lose control and have a ball slip out of my hand. I think hitters actually appreciate the idea of pitchers – especially guys throwing close to 100 miles per hour – being able to have a good idea of where that thing is headed.

When it’s cold at the start and end of the season, the baseballs get very slick – like eight balls from the local pool hall. And in recent seasons, MLB has manufactured a ball that was slicker and had flatter seams than ever before. So how’s a guy supposed to be able to hang on to – and control – those things?

“Doctoring” a baseball is as old as the game itself.

Since the outset, pitchers have been trying to make baseballs do funny things by adding a little weight to one side of the ball with spit, or Vaseline, or whatever. “Loading” the ball is illegal and not too many guys try to get away with it anymore. For awhile “scuffing” a ball was a thing – and I tried that too, with terrible results. I think they’re still trying to find the “scuffball” I threw to the Cubs Leon Durham in a spring training game.

Loading, or scuffing, or cutting a ball with rivets on your glove is one thing. That’s cheating. But being able to use a little pine tar to make your fingers a little bit stickier? That’s something very different.

Could someone please alert Commissioner Manfred to this fact: Pitchers do not put pine tar on the ball.

If he were actually a baseball fan, he’d already know this.

Instead, here comes his purported “crackdown’ on guys who use any substance except rosin – which helps dry your sweaty hands but does nothing to help your grip – to get a better handle on the ball they are throwing.

Wow.

And part of this “crackdown” is using analytics to see if a pitcher is getting a tighter spin (higher “spin rate”) and thereby a little extra giddy up on his pitches than normal. Allegedly, the Dodgers Walker Buehler was using something like sunscreen during last year’s postseason in order to get a better grip and his spin rate went up. A lot.

Most baseball fans will hear about this, shrug and say, “So what?” it’s not news. It’s looking for a competitive edge – sort of like a runner on second base trying to steal the catcher’s signs – but it’s not cheating., Cheating is using a centerfield camera to do the same…or putting Vaseline on the ball.

Why can’t the guy in charge see the difference?

Hitters doctor their bats all the time. They rub their bats with hard objects like glass bottles or dog bones in order to push the grains of the bat closer together and make the bat harder. Been a common practice for decades. To that, pitchers say, “So what?”

It’s part of the game. The game the Commissioner of Baseball keeps trying to change and “fix,” when his kinds of fixes are the last thing the game needs.