I prefer belt buckleSo did Whitey Ford----after he finally got nailed (sort of) using his wedding ring, which had a tiny rasp in it but enough that, as he once put it, "I had my own tool bench out there."
When Ford couldn't go to his belt buckle, catcher Elston Howard had a trick: he'd scrape a ball against the buckles of his shin guards before returning it to Ford.
Of course, in the old days you could go to the toxic waste dump if you chewed tobacco. That was Lew Burdette's little trick: he'd spit the juice to a certain part of the dirt near the rubber and build himself a little sump puddle. Whenever he went to adjust his shoes (which was half the time, a habit he'd had since he was a Yankee farm hand), he'd scoop up a little of his contraband puddle if he needed an out pitch post haste.
Joan Crawford may or may not have screamed "No! Wire! Hangers!" at her daughter . . . but Mike Flanagan of the Orioles didn't mind them when it came to demonstrating what he could do with a doctored ball if he wanted. He once showed Thomas Boswell a fresh ball, broke open a wire coat hanger, scratched four parallel cuts into the meat of the hide, then held it up. "Any time I need five new pitches," he said, "I got 'em."
The catcher is my favorite, but it’s easy for the plate umpire to pick up unusual flight back to the mound, if the ump pays attention.
In the bigs anything wrong with the ball and a new one is in. Even the batters pay attention and ask the ump to check the ball
I wonder if anyone ever just put something very dry and slick on their fingers, like spray silicone or boot waterproofing. That way you wouldn’t have to keep putting it on and nothing would be on the ball. I know they use some stuff that dries up with no evidence like hand sanitizer, but you would have to put more on. Anything to let the ball slip off the fingers and be grabbed by your thumb to give forward rotation with a fastball motion.
They used to call the knuckler the ‘dry spitter.’ Here’s an awesome RA Dickey gif, what Hoyt Wilhelm used to call his ‘spinner.’ Looks like bugs bunny throwing his corkscrew. RA threw this one at 80mph. Yes, 80mph. The catcher closes his eyes when he catches it.
Freegards
