Here is my take. In long past times, baseballs were reused until warn out, and those that went into the stands were returned. This allowed the balls to get naturally bruised up, which inadvertently gave pitchers more (unpredictable) movement than today's clean, unused baseballs. Because of this, old pitchers may not have had to throw with as much elbow rotation as today's pitchers do to get effective levels of movement. This lower spin requirements meant less strain on arms of pitchers, letting them throw more innings and longer games than you typically see in today's baseball. Giving that pitcher's elbows are going out at record frequencies in the MLB in the last decade, I'm all for allowing pitchers to rough up balls some, moreover, enhance it beyond what they can do now. Optimally, I think the league should intentionally texture-ize parts of the ball to give pictures the spin they need, and thus help minimize injury risk.
I think the pace they throw the ball at has to have something to do with it now too. Just in the last several years the number of pitchers throwing above 95 and above 100 seems to have dramatically increased.
If you’ve ever paid much attention to some of the big time high schools err “sports academies” in California where they “recruit” from the entire state and more, it’s crazy. We are probably dramatically better at finding and training kids to throw heat.
Good point.
And I don't think you have to throw 95+ if the ball gives you great movement. At the extreme, look up wiffle ball pitching on youtube; its wild.
Growing up in the 60’s my next door neighbor, Eddie, an elderly man, who played semi-pro and a little pro ball. His cousin is Stanley Coveleski, a pitcher who is in the hall of fame, he still holds some World Series records, Stanley’s two brothers were pretty good as well.
Anyway, Eddie actually knew most of the greats, Babe, Ty, had a lot of pictures hanging out, playing cards, drinking, barnstorming etc. Eddie told me back in the late 60’s that ice was ruining the arms of pitchers. Eddie was a catcher and for barnstorming trips he got to catch a lot of great pitchers. Eddie said the icing of arms was what was causing pitchers to have so many problems. Eddie said that when you apply ice you stop the healing process, then the stresses and damages don’t get fully repaired, keep repeating and eventually something fails. He predicted that the problem would keep getting worse, because they were starting to have kids ice their arms in little league, creating very unstable arms at an early age.
A few years ago the guy who invented the RICE protocol admitted that he had no clinical basis for using ice. He used it because everyone else was using it, and that it was probably doing more harm than good, because the ice was removing the small amount of inflammation, signaling the body to stop the repair.
Eddies told me that for kids coming up they should keep them on a pitch count and give them more rest, and never any ice, let the body recover on its own. The body will build up the ligaments and tendons to combat the repeated stress, making recovery faster and easier over time. Because back in the day guys would throw 40 or 50 complete games a year and you can’t do that without having a “gorilla arm”, he said all great pitcher’s pitching arm!looked different than their other arm, you could see the buildup, the arms weren’t bigger just different.
Eddie was 75 and could still drop down into a catchers squat and bounce right up, then he’d say, “no ice”.
Turns out the guy was right, unless you’ve got compartment syndrome where you have a dangerous swelling problem you should let your body heal itself naturally. The little bit of swelling is your body putting blood and other fluids at the injury site to enact repairs, and using ice do remove those fluids is dumb. It’s like lowering a moderate fever when you are sick, you are compromiseing your bodies ability to fight the infection. Eddie told me that when he felt himself getting sick when he was younger he would go to a sauna and sweat it out, but now that he was older he’s take the hottest bath he could stand for as long as he could stand it. He lived into his 90’s and I never remember him being sick. I do the sauna trick when I’m sick, and it usually drastically reduces the severity and length of the cold or flu.
+1 for sauna / sweating out any cold or flu. Even when I'm feeling like death, a 60 min sweat session at the gym that morning usually means I'm back to normal by the next day.
Doesn't take all that much effort to work up a good sweat when you're sick too.
I used to swear by exercise to sweat out a cold, but then a couple of times it seemed to pull it deeper into my lungs and linger as bronchitis for a long time. "Rest and fluids" seems to do better now.
Except when it doesn't.
There doesn't seem to be much predictive power in personal anecdotes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/health/03real.html : "In one study by Austrian researchers, for example, a group of 50 adults were split into two groups and tracked for six months. One group was instructed to use saunas regularly; the other group abstained. At the end of the study the sauna group had contracted fewer colds. “This was found particularly during the last three months of the study period, when the incidence was roughly halved compared to controls,” the scientists wrote. Other studies have found similar results. But doctors caution that saunas can be hazardous to those with heart or circulatory problems."
https://www.healthline.com/health/can-you-sweat-out-a-cold#s... : cites the same study and says it may prevent colds, but cites one study saying that hot dry air specifically (3-minute exposures thereto) doesn't help... seems not the regular kind of sauna: "Use of this type of sauna has little in common with that of a regular sauna, where one usually stays longer than 10 minutes and sweating is desired." Hmmph. I'll say that one is only partly relevant.
And the "Other studies have found similar results" link's abstract says this: "The common cold has great socio-economic impact. To date, no prophylaxis has been scientifically shown to be effective. A number of older reports implied that visits to the sauna and other thermotherapeutic measures might provide a certain degree of protection. More recent data suggest that this supposition is probably true. Nevertheless, there are a number of important questions still to be answered in this area."
The cited study 1990 https://doi.org/10.3109/07853899009148930 is evaluating "consistent sauna use preventing colds" rather than "get in the sauna to sweat out a cold", and in fact stated that
"The average severity of the common colds per cent
was 1.8f0.8 in group 1 and 2.0k0.7 in group 2. The
mean duration of common colds per event was 6.7 k3.9
days in group 1 and 7.5k5.6 days in group 2. Neither
yields a significant difference between the two groups."
So, that one study found a minor preventative effect, but no curative effect.
Interesting that they also state
"The average frequency of sauna bathing was 26.8 55.5
(mean k SO) per six months. The frequency of common
colds during this time was 33 in group 1 and 46 in group
2. This difference between the two groups is statisti-
cally significant (P <0.05). The expected frequency ac-
cording to previous reports (1-9) and based on the six
months preceding (Table 1) the study would be 50 per
six months in each group."
They expect 50 colds per group of 25 people in six months? On average each person getting a cold for a week every three months?
Looks like that's not far off, depending on the age distribution. Kids 4-8 per year, over 60 maybe 1/year. Wow.
the spitting one was odd to me, it seems totally natural. for the pine tar, I am with the pitchers again. if batters can use it to have better grip on their bats, seems totally logical for pitchers to do the same to their balls
Reminiscent of the countless ball tampering incidents in the sport of cricket. [1]
Of the England cricket team in 2005:
"It was my job to keep the shine on the new ball for as long as possible with a bit of spit and a lot of polish. And through trial and error I finally settled on the type of spit for the task at hand. It had been common knowledge in county cricket for some time that certain sweets produced saliva which, when applied to the ball for cleaning purposes, enabled it to keep its shine for longer and therefore its swing." He found Murray Mints worked the best.
Polishing the ball is acceptable in cricket (you polish one side and leave the other rough so the bowler can produce swing). What's not acceptable (but still happens) is players will rough up the other side with foreign objects.
That's fascinating, because I play competitive wiffle ball and we similarly scuff up new balls before using them- the curve characteristics are completely different vs a smooth one.
Cricket is a bit different to baseball because polishing the ball is an accepted part of the game. By polishing one side of the ball and allowing the other-side to naturally grow dull you alter the flight characteristics of the ball - it's how you can achieve movement through the air or 'swing'.
The ball is rarely replaced - it is very much intended for the condition of the ball to deteriorate over the course of an innings various tactics revolve around when to make bowling changes as some bowlers specialize with the 'new' ball which is shiny and hard and others have a style designed to exploit the older ball which is softer and more dull. There are certain time milestones that elapse in the match where captain can elect to replace a old worn ball with a new shiny ball.
The illegal part is ball tampering rubbing some foreign substance against the ball such as dirt or mud to weight it down or scuffing up the ball with something (A player on the Australian team was caught using a strip of sandpaper, which was a big scandal over here recently).
At school, where such rules were not enforced, some kids used hair gel on one side of the ball. Most were too unskilled to really exploit it but a good bowler could achieve what felt like a metre of savage sideways swing, enough that a ball that started out looking like a wide would finish up whistling past the ears of the hapless batsman.
If you're a baseball fan, the book 'The Glory of Their Times' mentioned in the NYT article is a phenomenal read. It's the recollections of about 20 players about their playing days in the early 20th century, and is a reminder of why the game is so special.
I read an article a few years ago that casts some doubt on Rube Marquard's story [1], which was one of my favorites from the book. I don't think this actually changed my opinion of the book, but just added a little more color to it.
Interestingly, in cricket, spitballs are legal and an integral part of bowling [1]. There's an odd middle ground where it's sort of legal to use foreign substances like sunblock or hair gel as long as you're not overt about it.
I struggle with this, I think as long as you aren't getting spit in your eye as a batter, who cares if a pitcher throws a spit ball, a cutter, or any other "cheat" pitch. I feel like that is living on the margins and that you probably aren't affecting the balls flight path as much as you think you are. 60' 6" isn't really a great distance, and batters have generally hit 1 out of every 3 or 4 times they bat since basically forever...
Spit balls were originally banned ostensibly for batter safety. This was in an era before batting helmets and replacing the ball nearly every time it touched the ground. It’s not clear that reintroducing it would cause a safety concern, but MLB is interested in having a certain balance of defense and offense and giving the pitchers back the spitter would require some offsetting change for the offense. With the recent clampdown on PEDs, I think the balance is probably temporarily too pro-defense, so it seems unlikely that the league would be inclined to reintroduce.
I do think it would make sense to give pitchers some additional grip aid like pine tar when the temperature is below a certain level. It seems like in the unwritten rules of the game, this is usually allowed if kept discrete.
The great body of unwritten rules is what makes baseball so enjoyable to follow over many years but also may be contributing to the declining interest in general. It's a slow game the rewards patience, subtlety, etc.
