Some of the old-school players around here remembered when scuff marks, pine tar and Vaseline, illegal but often overlooked by the sport, did funny things to a baseball.
But Spider Tack? That’s a new one, a sticky paste and the latest substance created to make a baseball move more than God intended, lowering the chance that a bat will crush it.
It’s new, its evolutionary timeline unknown. And it works. Too well, really.
“I don’t know what it is,” said Nate Craigue, the Concord High graduate who briefly played professional baseball 25 years ago in the Minnesota Twins’ organization. “Back when I was playing, we did not have Spider Tack and we did not have spin rates. You could not keep track of that.”
You can now. Spider Tack and spin rates are the newest negative buzzwords connected to Major League Baseball, following four other past sins: the Black Sox Scandal of 1919, corked bats during the 1970s and ’80s, the muscle-bound steroid era of the ‘90s and, more recently, electronically stealing signs.
In Spider-Gate, technology and analytics joined forces. The number of times a ball revolves on its axis became vital, teams began to realize, to a pitcher’s success, and a device that could actually tabulate those numbers is now part of the sport like hot dogs and double plays.
Through its umpires, MLB now conducts pop inspections, looking for the sticky substance illegally used by pitchers to improve their grip on the ball. They got the idea from competitive weightlifters, who use it as well.
Pitchers say using Spider Tack is justified. They say baseballs are far smoother than they once were, manufactured with the seams stitched closer to the ball, less raised. This, they claim, makes them throw wildly, putting batters at greater risk. Some hitters actually understand this point of view.
But with safety comes a catch. Yes, pitchers will hit fewer batters. Craigue, a former infielder, will never forget the time he was beaned in the head during a minor league game in 1994. He suffered a concussion and missed some time.
But pitchers will also dominate hitters like never before, like they are now. Their increased ability to dig their fingertips into those seams is where traction is generated.
More traction means more spin.
More spin means more movement.
Move movement means more strikeouts than ever — and the fewest runs scored in more than 50 years.
“The fact that players found something different than rosin and sunscreen was not surprising,” said former Major League pitcher Bob Tewksbury, a Merrimack Valley High School graduate who now lives in Maine. “With the technology, everyone is improving. I don’t know what (Spider Tack) feels like, but I do know that everyone wants to increase spin rate.”
Craigue, an ex-infielder, and Tewksbury played professional baseball. A shoulder injury stopped Craigue’s career early. Tewksbury overcame arm problems and was named an All-Star with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1992 and won 17 games the next season.
Their views on the controversy, seeing both sides, mirror those of other area ballplayers who got a substantial taste of the sport beyond high school.
That is, it’s nuanced. There’s a gray area that sits between a public relations disaster – like the muscle-bound steroid era and, more recently, stealing signs – and a technique that everyone knows has been passed down from generation to generation.
Gerrit Cole, the New York Yankees’ top pitcher, paused for 15 seconds after a reporter asked him if he had ever used Spider Tack. That said a lot.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” Cole said, an awkward sense filling the clubhouse. “There are customs and practices that have been passed down from older players to younger players.”
Baseball never cared about ball doctoring. Or didn’t seem to. Except if you were blatant about it, like the time Michael Pineda of the Seattle Mariners had a clear smear of pine tar visible on his neck. He was ejected.
Pine tar can be used for better grip on the bat, not the ball.
This was never cited as an explosive issue. Even Tewksbury, always squeaky clean, said he used pine tar, not rosin, the legal stuff stored in a pouch on the back of the pitching mound and largely ignored these days.
“A little pine tar,” Tewksbury admitted, “but most of the time just dirt and sweat. But I can see with the seams raised, your breaking ball will be better.”
The Spider Tack, essentially, raises the seams, giving you more snap on your curveball while helping your fastball maintain a constant plane, yet appear to rise.
It worked. Too well. Halfway through this season, batting averages are at their lowest point since 1968. Each team strikes out an average of about nine times per game, the highest in history.
Baseball knows it can ill afford to stumble again, already suffering from long games and, more importantly, a molasses-like pace that does nothing to stimulate the mind.
Still, the unwritten rule remained through the decades. Bounce the rosin bag on the palm of your hand like a Hacky Sack. Be discreet using anything else. Meanwhile, umps had no interest – or very little – in citing the sunscreen layered on pitchers’ arms, or the gel in their hair or under the bill of their caps.
Craigue noted that there’s a lot of downtime in baseball. There’s time to talk about different concoctions.
“You have a bunch of ballplayers together for seven straight hours at night,” Craigue told me. “Of course they’re pushing the envelope and trying to be better. It was OK, part of the game.”
Clandestine methods include scuffing the baseball, changing its shape, which could add to its movement when hitting the wind. A belt buckle scuffs well.
Tewksbury recalled former Yankees teammate Rick Rhoden, who was pitching in Baltimore against the Orioles. Manager Earl Weaver had been inspecting baseballs. He watched Rhoden closely on the mound. He asked the home plate umpire to check him for a hidden foreign substance or item, like a piece of sandpaper.
“He swallowed a small piece of sandpaper that was on his finger,” Tewksbury said. “When (the umpire) got there, he was like, ‘Nothing to see here.’ ”
Tewksbury said he never scuffed. He also said he’d never bring a scuffed ball to the attention of the umpire. That’s the same philosophy noted by Steve Destefano, who’s 65 and only stopped pitching a few years ago. Destefano pitched at Division I Maine and was the backbone of the Sunset League for years.
He didn’t scuff, either. But he, like Tewksbury, also held onto a ball like a kid with his teddy bear once he noticed it had been marked in some way.
“We used the same ball for three innings,” Destefano said. “If there’s a little bit of a cut on the ball, I can use my middle finger to dig in and throw an overhand curve. That thing would bite.”
Now Spider Tack is biting the game in the rear end. Doctoring a baseball no longer has the charm and innocence it had when Gaylord Perry, a notorious spitballer, was voted into the Hall of Fame three decades ago.
Now, with the importance of RPMs crashing into baseball with the force of a NASCAR engine, the game is about to change significantly.
Checking pitchers randomly is embarrassing for the sport and angers pitchers. An Oakland pitcher quickly gave up his belt and pulled his pants down in a mocking and sarcastic reaction to a surprise inspection.
Phillies manager Joe Girardi asked the home plate umpire to check Matt Scherzer of the Washington Nationals, one of baseball’s best pitchers, after Scherzer had already been inspected twice.
Scherzer glared, sending a high, hard message into the Phillies dugout. Girardi, the veins in his neck popping, challenged all comers to a fight.
“It’s something that has been brought to light and more kids are talking about it,” said Bryan Caruso, one of the top sluggers in Endicott College history and the GM at the Concord Sports Center hitting school.
“I never heard of the stuff. When I was playing, rosin and sunscreen or pine tar with sunscreen were used on the forearm. You can’t see it.”
That was OK, considered sandlot ball, played by mischievous kids. No worries. At least not enough to look for wrongdoing. Not enough to ambush pitchers as they walk off the mound, searching for a substance that, apparently, makes you better than you are.
Destefano never cracked the starting rotation at Maine. With a little help, though, who knows?
“I might have had a better curveball,” he said.