Clipping:The rising pitching delivery; difficulty enforcing the delivery rule

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19C Clippings
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Date Sunday, December 17, 1882
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The allowance of a shoulder delivery to pitchers is but an acknowledgment that the old rule of a waist height can not be enforced. The trouble heretofore in enforcing the rule was not for want of a penalty, but in the severity of it. The penalty was the forfeiture of the game, and a sudden termination of the playing. Of course this would not do, for no crowd of spectators who had paid their entrance money would submit to having a game cut short by an umpire calling a “foul baulk” for an offense in pitching. The penalty should have been made a reasonable one, then it could and would have been enforced and shoulder pitching would never have been successful. If the penalty would have been to give the batter his base, and base runners also a base, the result would have been a speedy cure of high armed pitching. As the rule now stands it is no better than before, because the penalty is not changed. The rule now says, “below the shoulder” instead of “below the waist.” Every sensible person knows that half the high-handed pitchers go above the shoulder, and some as high as the ears. The same old trouble and source of fussing will exist next year again unless a practical penalty be substituted and we shall, in a few years, be compelled to still further amend by substituting “below the crown of the head,” instead of “below the shoulder.” the upward tendency of the pitcher's arm should be checked.

Source Cincinnati Commercial Tribune
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Submitted by Richard Hershberger
Origin Initial Hershberger Clippings

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