Freak Deliveries
Spitballs, licorice balls, slippery elm balls, emery balls, shine balls, mud balls, paraffin balls. You name it, in 1918, there was no shortage of ways for pitchers to cheat.
Except that, really, it wasn’t cheating. There was a fine for “discoloring the ball,” but it was minimal. It was not until 1920 that baseball, after years of discussion and foot-dragging on the topic, finally outlawed these, “freak deliveries.” Still, 17 spitballing pitchers were grandfathered in after the rule change, and the last legal spitball was thrown by Burleigh Grimes, who retired in 1934.
Though not explicitly banned, ball-doctoring was unseemly, and no pitcher wanted to be blatant about it. It was not done openly. Reds infielder Heinie Groh described teammate Hod Eller’s approach to interviewer Lawrence Ritter: “Old Hod had what we liked to call a shine ball. What it was, he had a file 
Washington manager Clark Griffith wanted spitballs banned, and set out to “shineball the American League to death.” (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.) in his belt and every once in a while he’d rub the ball against that file.” Altering the surface of the ball that way would give it strange movement on its way to the plate.
Eller himself told the Literary Digest that he first discovered the benefits of freak pitches by accident, on a wet day in 1917. “The ball which I was using became smeared with dirt and I tried to rub off this dirt with no other thought than to be able to get a good grip of the ball,” he said. “I then threw the ball and both the catcher and myself were surprised at the queer break it made when crossing the plate.”
Eller also described the way to throw a shine ball. “It depended entirely upon smoothing the surface of the ball. Most players used paraffin or some similar substance to smooth the ball. But this was not necessary; merely rubbing the ball vigorously would suffice, if you could put enough speed behind it and I was usually able to do that. A properly shined ball could be made to break in various ways, but the common way was to make it break up; that is, to give it the effectiveness of a fastball with compounded interest.”
Use of “freak” pitches was so widespread in 1918 that fed-up Washington manager Clark Griffith went on a campaign of, “shine-balling the American League to death,” as The Sporting News put it. He ordered his pitchers to use every available doctoring method—paraffin oil, tar, talcum, licorice—and withheld their pay until they mastered freak pitches. “Griff is out to fight the shine ball with the shine ball—fire against fire,” the magazine reported. “He declares he has ordered his pitchers to use it and that they are developing it so satisfactorily in his campaign that soon a run scored against the Washington team will be as rare as dodo bird specimens.”
Griffith figured nonstop freakery from Washington pitchers would force the issue. “You can bet on it that we’ll show them enough of the shine ball that they will become sick enough of seeing it that they’ll pass a rule barring a player for life if he tries it,” Griffith said.
He was wrong. The league did nothing. On the bright side, the Senators’ team ERA dropped from 2.75 in ’17 to 2.14, first in the A.L., in ’18. That did not much discourage the use of freak pitches.
