May 9, 2021

Baseballs and bats lasted longer in the author’s day, thanks to a succession of repairs with small nails and plenty of electrical tape.

By Patrick Kennedy

The thought surfaced in my cranial vault while I was watching the broadcast of a recent big-league game. In the first inning alone, the home plate umpire tossed out 17 brand new balls. Not once did the masked arbiter give the discarded ball so much as a courtesy glance for damage. So I wondered: What’s happened to the balls used in big-league games?

Well, nothing, really. It’s not the baseball itself, which is basically the same, weighing a hair over five ounces and sewn together with 108 stitches. The ball, however, is considerably whiter and brighter than the dangerously dark, tobacco-stained sphere common during the so-called “dead ball” era. The ball may also be periodically juiced or de-juiced whenever the game’s tall thinkers feel the need for more, or less, offence. (The Korean Baseball League recently “deadened” its official ball to reduce the number of home runs, and it worked.)

So why the quick hook for a near-new ball that barely grazes the dirt? Big-league umpires in my day also threw balls out of play, though more often than not they simply thumbed away the specks of dirt and shoved the blemished orb back into their ball bag. Today’s pitchers demand pristine balls. I suppose that’s fair. Modern high-speed hurlers who unleash three-digit m.p.h. fastballs don’t need any aerodynamic advantages that may come with even a slightly altered ball.

But please explain why a Blue Jays pitcher, late in the same game and immediately after his third baseman had returned to him a weakly tapped foul ball, would inexplicably throw that ball out of play and request a new one. Dented? Discolored? COVID-related? Who knows?

Say it ain’t so, Josephine, but it appears today’s game, like the old grey mare of many long years ago, ain’t what it used to be, at least longevity-wise.

Today’s home plate umpire discards balls with no more thought than Nero giving a “thumbs down” to a Christian. And that’s if the ump even gets his hands on the ball. Oftentimes it is the catcher who now disposes of the ball after a PID — MLBspeak for a “pitch in dirt.”

Such disregard for MLB Rule 4.01 (Umpire Duties) would never fly back when Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry, he of nine parts pitcher, one part KY Jelly, was “loadin’ up wet ones.” Perry’s catchers would’ve been all too eager to toss away a doctored ball that dipped like a swallow en route to home plate.

All it needs is a couple of times around the block with black electrical tape.

These days, catchers aren’t the only ones usurping the umpire’s clout when it comes to a ball’s worthiness. Pitchers have taken up the task, too. If a pitcher wants a new ball, he no longer throws it to the umpire, as in olden days. Instead, he lobs it toward the home team’s dugout. This eliminates the middleman, who in this case happens to be the person in charge. Somewhere, the old spitball artist Preacher Roe is smiling.

It’s particularly puzzling to see a pitcher shed a batted ball that has just finished paying dividends in the form of an out or two. One might assume, especially in a sport rife with superstition, that a pitcher might be keen to keep using that “lucky” ball. Ride out the wave. Roll the dice with a proven winner. Nope, and as proof, here was the Tampa Bay reliever the other night asking for a new ball even though the one he just tossed out of play had rewarded him with a double play. Holy Rabbit’s Foot, Batman!

Major League Baseball goes through approximately 300,000 baseballs each season, roughly 10 to 12 dozen a game. Yet the service record for each individual ball is shockingly short. That $6 baseball, wool-wrapped and hand-stitched at the Rawlings factory in Costa Rica, lasts on average two big-league pitches. Two. A lit match lasts longer.

And once a ball is tossed out of an game, it never re-enters. It becomes a “batting practice” ball or a fan souvenir or the latest purchase in someone’s collection of sports memorabilia — another income stream that all 30 teams began exploring years ago.

“Game-used” balls and (broken) bats can be purchased online. Business is brisk. For the right price, you can buy a “PID” game ball. Balls fouled into the screen or thrown out of play are handed to an MLB authenticator — there’s one in every dugout — who makes notes on the point in time when the ball was pulled from play. This practice has shifted to those bullpens located beyond the outfield fence. Players in those ‘pens generally flip home-run balls to fans in the bleachers above. Not anymore. Now they’re told to turn in such balls for authentication and resale purposes.

A big-league ball’s brief in-game existence pales in comparison to the sometimes seasons-long lifespan of balls used by the fabulous Imperial Oil Kings, a “rags-to-rags” outfit comprised of kids from my old north-end neighbourhood. Oil King balls were prized and preserved. If the cover started to come unstitched, it was restitched with fishing line. When the cover finally wore out and couldn’t be restitched, it was peeled off and replaced with a generous wrapping of black electrical tape.

What we gave up in visibility come dusk, we gained in speed and distance off the bat: The tape, shiny and seamless, was that much closer to the cork centre, resulting in batted balls flying faster and farther, sometimes frighteningly so.

LHP Arnie Jarrell, a member of the Kingston and District Sports Hall of Fame, came to the rescue of the Oil Kings.

When an Oil King ball was lost, all was not lost. We had a benefactor in Arnie Jarrell, the crafty, lightweight left-hander who weighed about a buck-sixty and twirled 21 victories in pro ball for the Kingston Ponies in its Class-C Border League debut season in 1946.

Arnie would sometimes watch from his Rideau Street front step as the young Oil Kings players in the nearby park searched in vain for a ball. Arnie would quietly disappear inside his house and reappear moments later with a Border League game ball pulled out of a closet. The inscription might read, “First win, Kgn Ponies, 1946,” or “20th win, Kgn Ponies, 1946.” Fortunately for us, “Hickory” Jarrell was big on baseball, not on keepsakes.

Also treasured was the Oil Kings’ meagre supply of lumber. Every time a bat cracked, it was kept on active duty thanks to tiny nails and a dollop or two of Elmer’s wood glue. Oh yes, and plenty of tape to conceal the “repairs.”

One such metal-laden bat nicknamed the Louisville Log was still in service decades later during the waning moments of a 1987 Molson Senior Association semifinal series at Megaffin Park. Our 560 Legion team, featuring Oil Kings alumni including Eddie Jarrell player-manager Ken “Cup” Cuthbertson and yours truly, was down to its final out and trailing 7-5.

With the bases loaded with Legionnaires, teammate Kirk Twigg grabbed the 42-ounce Log and smacked a series-winning grand-slam home run. “I threw my back out swinging the darn thing,” Kirk laughs in recollection 34 years later. Neither the umpire nor Twigger knew it at the time, but that hefty war club was filled with more lead than Bonnie and Clyde.

Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter and a paid-up member of the Imperial Oil Kings Oldtimers Association. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com.