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Related: About this forum10 bizarre baseball rules you won't believe actually existed
1. Batters had the right to request a low or high pitch from 1867 to 1887Imagine Mike Trout walking up to the plate and telling David Price exactly where he wanted the ball. In the game's infancy, that was a reality: Prior to every at-bat, batters would request a high or low strike zone -- either from the knee to the belt or the belt to the shoulder -- and the pitcher had to put it there. Awfully demanding of you, late-19th-century batsmen.
5. Walks were scored as hits for one year, in 1887
If you read the above and thought, "Wow, that seems destined to cause all kind of record-keeping difficulties," well, you would be absolutely correct! A staggering 11 players hit .400 that season, nine of whom wouldn't have had walks not counted as an at-bat. The statistics were even rewritten in 1968 by the Special Baseball Records Committee, with drastic consequences: Cap Anson, who hit .421 to lead the league in 1887, had 60 hits taken away, which stripped him of not only the batting title but the honor of first-ever member of the 3,000-hit club.
6. Umpires in the 19th century had it made
The plight of the umpire is a difficult one: You try tracking a small white ball traveling at ridiculously high speeds, with a stadium full of people and the entire Internet ready to castigate you if you're wrong.
Being an umpire at the turn of the 20th century, though? That actually sounds pretty great: They were chosen from the crowd prior to first pitch -- they were often prominent members of the local community -- and rather than spend all that energy to squat behind the catcher, umpires were given easy chairs in the general vicinity of home plate. And that was just the beginning of the perks. From Ohio's Marion Star newspaper in 1916:
"The old time umpires were accorded the utmost courtesy by the players. They were given easy chairs, placed near the home plate, provided with fans on hot days and their absolute comfort was uppermost in the minds of the players. The umpire always received the choicest bits of food and the largest glass of beer."
8. The spitball was outlawed in 1920 -- but pitchers who had been throwing it for years were grandfathered in
Pitchers doctoring baseballs was always an ethical gray area, but it was a fairly common practice in the early days, and spit wasn't nearly the worst of it: pitchers would use mud, grease, soap, anything they could think of to make the ball dance in unpredictable ways.
Wanting to bring more offense to the game, MLB responded in 1920, outlawing the practice for good. But several famous spitballers were in the middle of their careers, and so the league came up with a compromise: a grandfather clause, allowing those who had thrown it before the rule to continue to do so. Righty Burleigh Grimes carried the "last official spitballer" mantle for 14 more years, grossing out all of his teammates until his retirement in 1934:
More at the link: http://m.mlb.com/cutfour/2015/05/22/124363454
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10 bizarre baseball rules you won't believe actually existed (Original Post)
Auggie
May 2015
OP
Yavin4
(35,357 posts)1. Here's one: Blacks weren't allowed to play until 1947
That was one really wacky rule.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)2. It's funny to read stuff like this...
when so many baseball fans bristle at things like the DH because of the "purity" of the game. LOL
Jamaal510
(10,893 posts)3. Until today,
my dad didn't know that baserunners had to tag the base until a pop fly is caught before they try to proceed to the next base. It's kind of an odd rule, but I guess it keeps things fair for the outfielders.