Clipping:Rebuttal to a proposal to return to straight-arm pitching; reduce the number of balls for a walk
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| Date | Sunday, September 12, 1880 |
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| Text | There is a good deal of nonsense current about a return to straight-arm pitching, or at least some restriction of the present privilege of underhand throwing. The thing is impracticable in the form advocated. To undertake now to change the rules regarding the style in which a ball may be delivered would be to reduce ball-playing to a hopeless muddle, so far as the question of pitchers is concerned. As the matter now stands every club has a perfectly defined idea of the value and effectively of its one or more pitchers. Change the rule regarding delivery, and no club would know anything about its pitching resources, and would be simply feeling its way in the dark. Moreover, there are no two umpires living, or yet to be born, who would construe and apply alike any rule that could be devised regarding a pitcher's delivery. What one regarded irregular and unlawful another would accept as unobjectionable, and endless confusion and trouble would result. Better let the style of pitching alone, and leave the underhand throwers in their glory. If anything is necessary to increase batting and run-getting, reduce the called balls to six, and then abolish the “fair-ball” call, so that every ball out of nine delivered by a pitcher shall be either a ball or strike. This would insure freer hitting, and possibly a greater number of bases on balls. The latter, however, is a very disagreeable and unsatisfactory feature of a game, and pitchers would soon be compelled to deliver fair balls, and depend on their fields rather than on their own skill. The question of pitching will doubtless receive some attention at the League's annual meeting, but the action taken is much more likely to be in the direction of decreased latitude in the number of balls than in any foolish tinkering with the rules governing the style of delivery. |
| Source | Chicago Tribune |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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