The Baseball Codes

by TURBOW, JASONDUCA, MICHAEL

• ISBN13: 9780375424694
• ISBN10: 0375424695
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-03-09
• Publisher: Pantheon

Summary

Retaliation can take many forms: Pitchers have always thrown brushbacks to intimidate hitters, but in 1946 Hugh Casey took the practice to another level when he threw a pitch at Marty Marion, who was standing in the on-deck circle. In 1968 Don Drysdale hit Rusty Staub with a pitch as punishment for having rummaged through Drysdale's shaving kit during an All-Star game.

Author Biography

JASON TURBOW’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, Sports Illustrated.com, Slam Magazine, Popular Science, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and he is a regular contributor to Giants Magazine and A’s Magazine. He lives in the Bay Area.

MICHAEL DUCA was the first chairman of the board of Bill James’s Project Scoresheet and has written for Sports-Ticker, Giants Today in the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Associated Press. He works in the office of the commissioner as an official scorer, and for mlb.com. He lives in the Bay Area.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 3
On The Field
Know When to Steal'Em	p. 17
Running into the Catcher	p. 33
Tag Appropriately	p. 36
Intimidation	p. 38
On Being Intimidated	p. 50
Slide into Bases Properly	p. 55
Don't Show Players Up	p. 59
Responding to Records	p. 72
Gamesmanship	p. 80
Mound Conference Etiquette	p. 88
Retaliation
Retaliation	p. 97
The Wars	p. 132
Hitters	p. 142
Off the Field	p. 152
Cheating
Sign Stealing	p. 157
Don't Peek	p. 168
Sign Stealing (Stadiums)	p. 172
If You're Not Cheating, You're Not Trying	p. 182
Caught Brown-Handed	p. 199
Teammates
Don't Talk About a No-Hitter in Progress	p. 209
Protect Yourself and Each Other	p. 221
Everybody Joins a Fight	p. 228
The Clubhouse Police	p. 235
Conclusion	p. 252
Acknowledgments	p. 261
Notes	p. 267
Index	p. 279
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Chapter 7
Don’t Show Players Up
 
It was a simple question. From the batter’s box at Candlestick Park, Willie Mays looked at Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford and, pointing toward Mickey Mantle in center field, asked, “What’s that crazy bastard clapping about?”
 
What that crazy bastard was clapping about only tangentially concerned Mays, but the Giants superstar didn’t know that at the time. It was the 1961 All-Star Game, and Ford had just struck Mays out, looking, to end the first inning. The question was posed when Ford passed by Mays as the American League defense returned to the dugout—most notably among them Mantle, hopping and applauding every step of the way, as if his team had just won the World Series. There was a good story behind it, but that didn’t much matter in the moment. Willie Mays was being shown up in front of a national baseball audience.
 
Under ordinary circumstances there is no acceptable reason for a player to embarrass one of his colleagues on the field. It’s the concept at the core of the unwritten rules, helping dictate when it is and isn’t appropriate to steal a base, how one should act in the batter’s box after hitting a home run, and what a player should or shouldn’t say to the media. Nobody likes to be shown up, and baseball’s Code identifies the notion in virtually all its permutations. Mantle’s display should never have happened, and Mays knew it.
 
Mantle had been joyous for a number of reasons. There was the strikeout itself, which was impressive because to that point Mays had hit Ford like he was playing slow-pitch softball—6-for-6 lifetime, with two homers, a triple, and an astounding 2.167 slugging percentage, all in All- Star competition. Also, Ford and Mantle had spent the previous night painting the town in San Francisco in their own inimitable way, and Ford, still feeling the effects of overindulgence, was hoping simply to survive the confrontation. Realizing that he had no idea how to approach a Mays at-bat, the left-hander opened with a curveball; Mays responded by pummeling the pitch well over four hundred feet, just foul. Ford, bleary and already half beaten, didn’t see a downside to more of the same, and went back to the curve. This time Mays hit it nearly five hundred feet, but again foul. It became clear to the pitcher that he couldn’t win this battle straight up—so he dipped into his bag of tricks.
 
Though Ford has admitted to doctoring baseballs in later years, at that point in his career he wasn’t well practiced in the art. Still, he was ahead in the count, it was an exhibition game, and Mays was entitled to at least one more pitch. Without much to lose, Ford spat on his throwing hand, then pretended to wipe it off on his shirt. When he released the ball, it slid rotation-free from between his fingers and sailed directly at Mays’s head, before dropping, said Ford, “from his chin to his knees” through the strike zone. Mays could do nothing but gape and wait for umpire Stan Landes to shoot up his right hand and call strike three.
 
To this point in the story, nobody has been shown up at all. Ford may have violated baseball’s actual rules by loading up a spitter, but cheating is fairly well tolerated within the Code. Mays’s reaction to the extreme break of the pitch may have made him look bad, but that was hardly Ford’s fault. But then came Mantle, jumping and clapping like a kid who’d just been handed tickets to the circus. It didn’t much matter that the spectacle was directed not at Mays but at Giants owner Horace Stoneham, who immediately understood the motivation behind Mantle’s antics.
 
Stoneham had gone out of his way to make Mantle and Ford feel at home upon their arrival in town a day earlier, using his connec

---

Excerpted from The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: the Unwritten Rules of America's Pastime by Michael Duca, Jason Turbow
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.