One Fan's Beef About Baseball

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
June 3, 1961


   I'VE ALWAYS thought well of Abner Doubleday for inventing baseball but confess that it doesn't fire me up as it once did.  It takes too long to play and it's become too refined.  Go to a night game that runs into extra innings and you get home about the time the milk man is making his rounds.
   Even allowing a fellow time to shave between innings, a regulation game should be wrapped up in a couple of hours.  It once was, but now such a game is an oddity.

   BASEBALL, paradoxically, has been hobbled by steps designed to give it more appeal.  The rules have been changed to insure more hitting and more runs.  Consequently more pitchers have to be used--and more time consumed.

Herb Score

   The spitter is long gone.  The emery ball was banned even earlier.  The pitcher now works with an unblemished ball.  If it's scuffed or roughed up it's tossed out.  It also is a far cry from the unlively sphere of old.  A well-hit ball comes off the bat like a bullet and pitchers work in an atmosphere of peril.
   Four years ago, Herb Score, one of the finest young lefties in the majors, was hit in the eye by a drive off the bat of Gil McDougald and never recovered his effectiveness.  The other day the White Sox sent him to San Diego.

   THE HOME RUN, once rare, dramatic and honest, has been made cheap and plethoric.  Half a dozen often are hit in one game, some by undersized runts who could barely have hit the dead ball Cobb and Wagner swung on into the outfield.

Cy Young

   With the fences in convenient range and windblown fly balls dropping out of sight, no pitcher can be sure of finishing what he starts.  Starting pitchers finished only 25 percent of last year's major league games.
   No pitcher has won 30 or more games since Lefty Grove did it 30 years ago.  Few pitchers can win 20, Warren Spahn and Early Wynn are the only hurlers currently operating who stand to win a total of 300 games, but in his 22-year span Cy Young won 511, an average of more than 23 per season.

   MAYBE the game would be less popular than it is if the dead ball were still used, if scores were low and close and the customers could get out of the park in time for dinner.  But a tight game always struck me as better than a loose one and baseball executives might be smart to revert to this view before they have to expand both leagues to 15 teams in order to beef up the gate.
   They might likewise take a leaf from baseball's bawdy past when players put winning ahead of fraternizing, and culture got lost in an occasional fight and the gendarmes had to be called out.
   It may be too bad, but the fact is that the roughneck player has more color than his gentlemanly teammate and is far better box office.  Ty Cobb was a rough one and so were John McGraw, Frank Chance and Johnny Evers.

Ty Cobb

Ty Cobb with spikes

 The best remembered St. Louis team was the Gashouse Gang, made up of such inelegant, unwashed

The Gashouse Gang

characters as Pepper Martin, Frank Frisch and Dizzy Dean.  They were not only fierce competitors but good showmen.  

TODAY, with umpires tossing players out for no more than a disdainful spit or a spot of cussing and arm waving, there isn't much color left.  There's just as much skill but many of today's stars are automatons, graceful and efficient mechanics doing an afternoon's work with little flair or enthusiasm.
   And if the baseball brass will hold still long enough for me to throw another one, I'd suggest that they keep the peanut and hot dog vendors out of sight save between innings so as not to obstruct the view.  At the last game I attended I saw more hucksters than hitters.  I'd rather watch the game than watch someone buy a beer.


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