Sliding
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Evidence on Sliding in Early Base Ball Accounts
by Richard Hershberger, October 2013
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Sliding in the Amateur Era
Richard Hershberger
Did base runners slide in the amateur era, and if so, how frequently? Looking at period reports, the most striking feature is that the evidence is thin. There are undoubted reports of runners sliding, but they are few and far between. The problem then is to determine if reports of sliding are rare because sliding was rare, or because it was commonplace and therefore unremarkable: are they man bites dog reports, or dog bites man? Or something in between?
To finish off the preliminaries, there are several distinct acts which today share the name “slide.” There is no hint of evidence for the hook slide or the pop-up slide in the amateur era. What there is evidence for is the straight slide into the base, both head-first and feet-first. There also are two reasons for a runner to slide: to avoid a tag, or to stop quickly without overrunning the base. Part of our task is to determine which of these or both led to sliding in the amateur era.
The earliest example in my notes of what seems to be a slide is from the New York Clipper of October 10, 1857:
...one of the Liberty’s, running to the first base and falling upon it with his hands, was decided in time.
Did the player literally fall down on the base, or is this a case of there not yet being a conventional vocabulary for the writer to employ? Another point to consider is that 1857 is when we start to see gloriously detailed accounts of games. Absence of evidence is always weak evidence of absence. This is especially true of baseball events first documented to 1857, as there are so few earlier detailed descriptions of the game.
There are two similar accounts from the following year, from the New York Sunday Mercury of July 25, 1858 and October 31, 1858:
[picked nines New York vs. Brooklyn 7/20/1858] Davis struck a fine ball, and made the second base with a mighty close shave, the ball having been passed up so quickly to Holder that Davis hadn’t the twentieth part of a second to spare, and he only touched the base by sprawling on the ground. Judgment was asked, and the umpire decided Davis “not out.”
[Olympic of Brooklyn vs. Independent of Somerville 10/14/1858] A striker of the Olympic was running from the second to the third base, the ball was passed to the third base, and reached it nearly at the same time as the runner, but it was at least a foot from him in fair view, when he fell on the base–decided “out.”
These raise the same questions as the 1857 account. The last one is particularly interesting. This is from a letter to the editor by a member of the Olympic club, complaining about the umpire. Did the slide (or fall) by the runner catch the umpire unprepared to properly interpret the play, or was it simply a blown call?
We first see a form of the word “slide” in this account, from the New York Sunday Mercury of August 26, 1860:
[Atlantic vs. Excelsior 8/23/1860] McMahon ran from the second to the third base, where he was put out... The ball was thrown by Leggett to Whiting to head off McMahon, who reached the base simultaneously with the ball; but in “sliding in,” he so far overreached the base that his arm was the only part of his body on the base. Judgment was asked for, and the umpire promptly decided that McMahon was “not out.” But McMahon, immediately after, incautiously raised his arm from the base before Whiting had a chance to deliver the ball; and the latter, detecting the movement, instantly touched him with the ball, and demanded judgment, which the umpire, of course, gave–deciding McMahon “out,” as he undoubtedly was.
The placing of “sliding in” in quotation marks suggests that this was not yet regarded as a standard usage. Subsequent accounts use the word routinely and without the quotation marks, suggesting that it was a recognized standard usage, which in turn implies that the action it named was common enough to merit a standard name. This and later accounts lack the hint of a pratfall. The simultaneous appearance of a standard vocabulary and disappearance of the language of “falling” and “sprawling” may hint that those earlier runners were truly sliding into the base, but the writers had not yet found the best vocabulary to describe it.
The account also seems to describe a feet-first slide, since it is hard to see how over-sliding head-first would leave only the arm touching the base. This seems to have developed into a trend, according to this account from the Philadelphia Inquirer of June 24, 1865:
The system of which I disapprove, and I am confident I will be upheld by the majority of players is, that on the field we notice the "slide game," or when a player in an effort to gain his base will throw himself on the ground, feet foremost, sliding for fully a distance of twenty feet.
Here are three more accounts, respectively from the New York Sunday Mercury of September 15, 1861, August 12, 1866, and the Detroit Advertiser and Tribune October 18, 1866:
[Eckford vs. Eureka of Newark, 9/13/1861] [Northup of the Eurekas at second base]. Anxious to avail himself of all the chances, Northup seized the first favorable opportunity to run for the third base, and started for it. The ball was there, however, as soon as he–notwithstanding he adopted the sliding scale motive to avoid it. By accident, he raised his foot from the base while the ball was yet in the hands of Grum, who, of course, immediately touched him, and demanded judgment, which the umpire promptly pronounced in favor of the ball, and the second hand (Northup) was declared out. This decision, though manifestly just, was in direct antagonism to the feelings of the “outer circle,” and was responded to by a general hiss, which, however, had not effect upon the invincible “Peter,”[Pete O’Brien] who knew he was right.
[Mutual vs. Union of Lansingburgh 8/10/1866] In the third inning, McQuade retired, from lifting his hand off the base and being touched by Goldie, Waterman fielding the ball to the first-base finely.
Ives obtained his run by a tremendous jump and slide on to the base under the pitcher’s hands.
The practice was mentioned by Henry Chadwick in 1868 in The American Game of Base Ball:
Some base runners have the habit of sliding in to a base when they steal one.
In our final account the runner did not slide despite his teammate’s calling to him to do so, from the Philadelphia Sunday Mercury of July 12, 1868:
[Athletic vs. Excelsior of Rochester 6/29/1868] ...hope never forsook any of us, until Dick [McBride] hesitated in the last inning between second and third base, undecided whether to run back to second or to go on; and, mind you, there was a man on second. Dick’s hesitancy broke the camel’s back. Had he listened to “Cuthy,” and slid for his third, he would have got it. Had he run for it he would have made it.
What to make of these accounts? There aren’t many. In the fourteen years from 1857 through 1870, the end of the NABBP era, my notes contain but ten mentions of what can plausibly be interpreted as sliding. One certainly can take from this that sliding was very rare indeed, but I am not so sure. Fully half of the accounts describe the runner being put out: one through (alleged) umpire error, one when the runner failed to slide when he should have, and three when the runner recklessly removed himself from the base following a successful slide. The plays merited mention not because the runner performed an unusual act, but because of the subsequent out. (One constant feature of early baseball reporting is that how outs were made is noted more carefully than how runs were made: the reverse of modern baseball reporting, reflecting the early condition that outs were harder to get than today, and runs easier.) This, combined with the other citations, suggests that by the post-war period slides were not extraordinary.
Another point to take away is that many of these accounts seem to describe attempts to evade a tag rather than to prevent overrunning the base. A bit of indirect evidence that preventing such overrunning was not the point of sliding comes from the enactment for the 1871 season of a new rule allowing runners to overrun first base without risk of being tagged out. This rule was due to the danger of injury from pulling up suddenly, according to the New York Clipper of December 10, 1870:
This rule was suggested by George Wright, whose lameness, like that of many other players, is attributable to an effort to check his speed when running to first base. The new rule, by allowing the base runner time to stop beyond, will avoid a frequent cause of injuries to base runners.
If sliding was a recognized option for stopping quickly at the base, no mention was made in discussions of the revised rule, and players were risking injury despite having this option.
So in summary, I believe that sliding was, at least by the post-war period, less common than today, but not extraordinary, and was used more to avoid tags than to stop quickly.
I close with an excerpt not from a period source, but from Peter Morris’s discussion of sliding from A Game of Inches:
Sliding does appear to have remained uncommon in the early days of baseball, and generally inadvertent. That is, a runner realized at the last moment that he would be unable to avoid overrunning and base and therefore chose instead to dive. Thus a premeditated slide may have been regarded as a novelty.
I quote this in respectful disagreement with Morris. I come to a different conclusion, but intelligent observers can read the evidence differently.