Batty Balls

By Tom Callahan

Though Denny McLain has won a new drug trial and will shortly be out of stir, other notorious pitchers are unleashing a crime wave in baseball. A week apart, only the fourth and fifth major leaguers ever suspended for malfeasance on the mound have received ten-day sentences. At the same time, bats are routinely being confiscated and X-rayed for illegal implants. The heavy summer air over the nation's famous diamonds has grown thick with larceny.

First, Phil Niekro's younger brother Joe was nabbed in a Minnesota game with an emery board in his hip pocket. He was captured on film, during an umpires' search, casually tossing something with his right hand while jettisoning something else with his left. A patch of sandpaper, described by the umps as "contoured for a finger," was also recovered from the grass. Niekro was ejected.

The Niekro brothers, 90, have not pitched 50 professional seasons without developing a certain look of innocence. "I wasn't marking the ball," Joe insisted, though a few blemished ones had arrived irregularly at the plate. "Like a lot of knuckle-ball pitchers, I occasionally file my nails after I warm up, and even between innings. Sometimes the emery board gets wet, so I have to go to the sandpaper." His brother believed him.

Philadelphia's Kevin Gross was obliged to stand mute after an umpire came out to the mound last week and found sandpaper glued into the pocket of his mitt. Unless Gross was building a dollhouse for his daughter between innings, he was caught. Sounding like a dazed mountain climber, the Phillies' pitcher kept mumbling, "It was just there." His embarrassment was so acute that Gross at first shushed the players' union (as opposed to the carpenters' union) when it came to his defense.

In this long-ball era, some people think pitchers should be permitted any device. Though the legend is that slippery pitches (spitballs, grease balls, cut balls) were banned in 1919 to facilitate more Babe Ruths, hygiene was at the heart of it. Like the players in those days, the balls were expected to remain in the game a little longer than they are today, and fielders were complaining about the sickly colored, gouged and slobbered-up baseballs.

If modern pitchers are dipping into the past, they are probably not alone. Commissioner Peter Ueberroth has been suspicious enough of corked lumber to order increased vigilance, and the bat of the Mets' Howard Johnson has already been X-rayed more than most frequent flyers. In their memoirs, the unsanitary pitcher Gaylord Perry and the unscrupulous slugger Norm Cash explained the rudiments of drooling and drilling. Well, almost every player today can read, and so many of them are handy with tools. T.C.