Clutch 31-2016: I Love Cheaters

Let’s first clear up the title of this blog. It’s not what you may think and it’s unlikely you would be able to guess it with 10 or 100 guesses. Mr. Clutch actually despises cheating, especially when it comes to blatant breaking of a law. Where the title comes from is while on one of the patented Clutch annual baseball pilgrimages a member of the Wolfpack noticed a women strolling down Margret Corbin Drive (Yes, that’s a real street) wearing a hat that bared that phrase. Since the topic of this blog is cheating and baseball – it seemed like a good fit.

It’s obvious that is “Cheating” occurs in every business in some faucet or another. Perhaps it’s something light like fudging numbers on a tax return or faking the original retail price on a factory outlet sale item. Sometimes it’s worse like stealing all of a customer’s money or cutting a corner that puts the public in danger. Cheating happens on a personal level all the time too. But – people who cheat on something individually usually don’t do it to perform better or work….or maybe they do?

To quote one of the movies on the Mr. Clutch all time roster: “The Firm”, Avery Tolar played by the immortal Gene Hackman described cheating well. He said something like “The difference between tax
avoidance and tax evasion is…” with multiple choice answers. Some of the answers were “Whatever the IRS (or powering body) says”, “A smart lawyer” or “10 years in prison”. The last option was “All of the above”.  Let’s take a look at that and convert this to baseball terminology.

Certain rules of the game are “Grey” area which means how they are interrupted, or in some cases their non-existence and non-assumption, is “Avoiding” versus “Evasion”.  The IRS is of course the baseball commissioner who can decide what is and isn’t a rule and also if a player broke one or not.  The smart lawyer is either the player or his representation trying to get around a rule. The 10 years in prison is a suspension if you get caught and then the commissioner determines that you indeed broke the law.

First there are the clear grey area items which the Clutch fact finding commission has determined is not really cheating, but more like taking advantage. “Stealing” signs from second base for example is something that is probably more unsportsmanlike than cheating. If a runner is on second base and can clearly see the next pitch battery signs of catcher instructions to pitcher, then it’s just something that’s out there. The runner has the option of reporting this information to the batter, and that’s probably where it gets grey. Now, stealing the team’s playbook prior to the game to gain the signs (cue Greg Brady) is a totally different story.  

Mr. Clutch’s long-time sensei, the late great Grandmaster John Kuhl, would often use the phrase “Steal with your eyes”, which somewhat correlates to the above notion of stealing a sign from the field. What Master Kuhl meant was that if you are preparing for a physical altercation with someone use the visuals around you to gain an advantage. How a person stands, clinches a fist and motions his body can easily determine his next move – just like in baseball.  When class wasn’t practicing sign stealing the students weren’t busy learning how to break necks and avoid being thrown off a rooftop.

Pitchers cheated all the time back in the day, and it seems to be something that has tapered off in recent years. There is that famous pre-cellphone camera footage of one of the Niekro brothers tossing a nail file off the mound into the grass before getting busted. It was Gaylord Perry who was infamous for throwing the “Spitball”. Scuffing or altering the ball in anyway gives the pitcher a clear unnatural advantage. Most recently (probably a few years ago) a Yankees pitcher got tosses for having some sort of grease on his glove. This is all cheating plain and simple.

Yes, returning back to the movies to find the gem when pitcher Eddie Harris in “Major League” gives the speech that describes it all. “Crisco, Bardahl, Vagisil. Any one of 'em will give you another 2-3 inches drop on your curve ball”. Apparently he used these substances to get his nose running so he could put snot on the ball. It was paying homage to the old pitchers named above who cut corners to get outs.

Hitters are not immune to cheating in the modern game. They are infamous for doing whatever they can to make the ball go farther and faster off the bat. The most common type is “Corking” the bat. This is simply coring out the meaty part of the bat where most contact is made and filling it with cork or any other rubbery bouncy type substance.  One of the most recent and more publicized version of this was when Sammy Sosa’s bat exploded when he grounded out that one faithful afternoon. He likely blamed it on the batboy.

Then there was the much ado about nothing famous George Brett pine-tar play. Long story short, Brett had 1” of extra pine-tar going up the handle of the bat which was noticed by manager Billy Martin. Brett hit a go-ahead home run in the 9th inning of that game versus the Yankees, but was declared out by the umpire when the measured the pine-tar and noticed it was illegal. As crazy as it sounds, the Royals protested the game and won! The commissioner (IRS) declared that though it was against the rules, it wasn’t done to gain unfair advantage in batting. The pine-tar clearly wouldn’t affect the distance or speed the ball would travel.

In closing, it wasn’t an accident that steroids, human growth hormones, Adderall, poppy seeds and other illegal substances weren’t mentioned here. That’s a subject that will be addressed in its own era.