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March 3, 2021
SOME VERY STRANGE BASEBALL RULES
For as long as most of us can remember, the basic rules of baseball haven’t really changed much since we discovered the game. Sure, there’s been tweaks here and there, but the game has remained basically constant. That’s why so many of us have been alarmed at recent developments that have shortened doubleheaders to seven innings and, most radically, will now start the tenth inning with a runner on second base. To the purists, including myself, this isn’t really baseball and where it will go from here is anyone’s guess. The philosophy and strategies of the game have been changed by analytics and the use of pitchers. We now seem to be watching more of a home run or strikeout game with eight or ten pitching changes a game.
But there was a time very long ago when some of the rules were quite different. And I’m not talking about the Dead Ball Era of the first two decades of the 20th century. No, it’s the very early game, the one that developed during the 19th century. There were rules in effect back then that we wouldn’t dream about, or should I say dare to dream about. Let’s take a look.
This one went all the way back to the very beginnings of the game and lasted in one form until 1883. It said simply that any fly ball or pop up that was caught on one bounce was still an out. Most players of that time favored the one-bounce catch for a very good reason. They still weren’t wearing gloves and if you caught
the ball on a fly you were risking a hand injury or just stinging pain. Gloves came into use about 1870, but the one-bounce rule was voted out in 1864. Yet one part of it remained until 1883. A foul fly or pop was still an out if caught on a bounce. It had to be tough on the hands in those years before gloves were worn, and the early gloves didn’t give a player much protection at all. Rough game back then.
Here’s one today’s hitters would really love. From 1867 to 1887, a batter could tell the pitcher where he wanted the ball. Before he stepped into the box the hitter would signal that he either wanted the ball low in the strike zone, between the
knee and the belt, or high in the zone between the belt and the shoulder. To get a strike call, the pitcher would have to comply with the batter’s request. Imagine how a pitcher would feel if he looked in at Babe Ruth and the Babe said, “Put it right here.”
Here’s another one that must have hampered pitchers in the early days. Until 1883, pitchers had to make their deliveries underhanded. The Knickerbocker rules, written in 1845 for the local team, stated that “the ball must be pitched, not thrown.” At that point in time pitched meant with a stiff, underhanded motion, something akin to bowling. John Thorn, major league baseball’s official historian, credits a pitcher named Tommy Bond as the first to raise his delivery just above the waist. That happened in the mid-1870s and, as more pitchers began raising their arm higher, the overhand delivery wasn’t far off and was fully allowed after 1883.
This one is for the books. There was a time in professional baseball, after overhand pitching was allowed, that offense dropped off dramatically. That led to a rule that lasted from 1885 to 1893, that allowed bats to have a flat face, much like in the sport of cricket. Guess they forgot about hitting a round ball with a round bat and hitting it square. Instead, they took the “square” to heart. The flat bat was proposed by the Cincinnati Red Stockings Harry Wright. At the same time, the pitching distance was increased and there was more offense. One problem. The flat bats weren’t very durable and kept splitting. By 1893 they were gone.
The final rule we’re going to look at thankfully lasted for just one year. That’s because it really changed what baseball was all about. In 1887 it was decided that walks would be counted as hits. Thanks to the rule change, eleven players finished the year with batting averages of .400 or better. Nine of them wouldn’t have gone past that magic number had the walks not been scored at hits. At the end of the
year, the rule was unceremoniously dropped. Hall of Famer Cap Anson walked 60 times that year. Counted as hits, he finished with a batting average of .421. But in 1968, the Special Baseball Records Committee negated the walks-as-hits statistic. Anson is still credited with the batting title for that season, but with a more modest .347 average. Imagine if Barry Bonds’ 232 walks in 2004 were counted as hits. He would have had an incredible 367 hits that year. With 605 at-bats, the walks now counting as at-bats as well as hits, his batting average would have been adjusted from a league-best .362 to an otherworldly .606. As it was, his on-base percentage that year was .609. No wonder the rule was scrapped.
Those are just some of the crazy rules from the early days of the game. If you know of any others, just let us know. We’ll be glad to hear them.
Bill Gutman
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In the early days of baseball a pitcher was credited with a strike when his pitch bounced and still went through the strike zone. I read that in “The New Baseball Bible” by Dan Schlossberg. Perhaps that’s why it’s still legal to hit a pitch that has bounced. I can think of no other reason.
I think you’re right.
Every sport always has a few strange rules that people can’t understand, but over time, these rules will be gradually improved to make the game better and better.
The rules of modern baseball have been quite perfect, but there are still some strange rules