When Baseball Banned the Spitball (But Let 17 Pitchers Keep Throwing It)

In February 1920, Major League Baseball's rules committee moved to ban the spitball and every other form of doctored pitch. The emery ball. The shine ball. The mud ball. Any delivery in which a pitcher altered the surface of the baseball with a foreign substance became illegal.

Then baseball immediately made an exception for 17 guys who were already doing it.

What the Spitball Was

The spitball did exactly what its name suggested. A pitcher would apply saliva, tobacco juice, petroleum jelly, or another slippery substance to one side of the baseball, changing its aerodynamics and creating late, erratic movement. A good spitball dropped, darted, and sailed in ways that no batter could anticipate. The pitch became part of professional baseball in the early 1900s, and pitchers like Ed Walsh, who still holds the career ERA record at 1.82, built entire Hall of Fame careers around it.

By most accounts, the spitball culture also looked disgusting. Pitchers chewed tobacco, applied dirt, licked their fingers, and rubbed every imaginable substance into the leather. The ball got progressively darker and harder to see as the game went on, and clubs often used one baseball for most or all of the game.

Why They Banned It

The primary motivation was offense. Team owners wanted more action, more hits, more home runs, more excitement at the gate. The "dead ball" era of the 1910s had produced low-scoring games built on bunting, base-stealing, and pitching dominance. Owners saw the spitball and its cousins as the enemy of offense.

Secondary arguments also mattered. The pitch created unsanitary conditions, challenged pitcher command, and stressed arms. But money drove the decision. Fans wanted to see hitting, and hitting sold tickets.

Historians also cite the death of Cleveland shortstop Ray Chapman in this period. A pitch to the head struck Chapman on August 16, 1920, and he died the next day. His death accelerated additional rule changes around replacing dirty baseballs during games. But owners had already approved the initial spitball ban months earlier. The timeline does not support the popular narrative that one caused the other, though Chapman's death cemented the urgency of cleaning up the game.

The Grandfather Clause

The ban created an immediate problem. Several established pitchers had built their entire repertoire around the spitball. Burleigh Grimes, who pitched for the Brooklyn Robins, argued that he'd spent more than a decade perfecting his wet delivery and had little else to fall back on. Stan Coveleski, who won three complete games in the 1920 World Series for Cleveland, had leaned on the same pitch for years. An overnight ban would have effectively ended careers.

So in the fall of 1920, league officials compromised. They identified 17 "bona fide" spitball pitchers, 8 from the National League and 9 from the American League, and let them continue using the pitch for the remainder of their careers. Everyone else had to stop.

The full list included Doc Ayers, Ray Caldwell, Stan Coveleski, Bill Doak, Phil Douglas, Red Faber, Dana Fillingim, Ray Fisher, Marv Goodwin, Burleigh Grimes, Dutch Leonard, Clarence Mitchell, Jack Quinn, Dick Rudolph, Allan Russell, Urban Shocker, and Allen Sothoron. Three of them, Coveleski, Faber, and Grimes, went on to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Last Legal Spitball

The grandfathered pitchers retired one by one through the 1920s and into the 1930s. By 1933, only three remained: Jack Quinn, Red Faber, and Burleigh Grimes. Quinn and Faber both retired after the 1933 season. The Cubs released Grimes in July 1933, and he later signed with the Cardinals and then the Yankees in 1934, becoming the last pitcher in either league still legally permitted to throw the spitball.

Grimes was something. He chewed slippery elm bark to condition his saliva, and the juice irritated his skin so badly that he refused to shave on days he pitched, earning the nickname "Ol' Stubblebeard." He attacked hitters, argued with opponents, and showed no remorse about his signature pitch. He won 270 games over 19 seasons. Voters elected him to the Hall of Fame in 1964.

On September 20, 1934, Grimes made his final appearance, pitching in relief for the Pittsburgh Pirates against the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. He retired the side in the eighth inning, striking out Joe Stripp to end the frame. That outing marked the last legally sanctioned spitball in a major league game.

After the Ban

Of course, banning the spitball did not eliminate it. Pitchers drew suspicion for illegal spitters for decades. Preacher Roe admitted he threw one. Opponents regularly accused Don Drysdale. Gaylord Perry built a Hall of Fame career while encouraging the belief that he doctored every ball he touched. Perry even titled his 1974 autobiography Me and the Spitter and kept throwing suspicious pitches deep into the 1980s. Umpires caught Joe Niekro with an emery board in his pocket during a 1987 game.

The spitball lives on, unofficially, in every argument about pitcher grip, foreign substances, and where to draw the line between preparation and cheating. MLB's 2021 crackdown on sticky substances replayed many of the same arguments baseball had in 1920 with modern chemistry. The core question has not changed in a century: how much can a pitcher alter the ball?

Baseball answered that question in 1920 and then immediately gave 17 exceptions. The game has been wrestling with the contradiction ever since.