Baseball Grandfathers the Spitball for Seventeen Pitchers

On December 17, 1920, the American and National Leagues agreed to let seventeen active spitball pitchers continue using the pitch for the remainder of their careers. The decision created a grandfather clause that allowed the wet pitch to linger in the game for another fourteen years, even though the Joint Rules Committee had formally banned it earlier that season.

The original ban had taken effect in February 1920, part of a broader effort to clean up the baseball after the death of Ray Chapman, after a pitch he could not see struck and killed him because the ball was dark with tobacco spit and dirt. The new rules prohibited the use of saliva, resin, talcum powder, and any other foreign substance on the ball. They also required umpires to replace scuffed or discolored baseballs throughout the game, a practice that contributed directly to the explosion of offense in the 1920s.

But the outright ban created a problem. Several pitchers had built their careers around the spitball, and removing it would effectively end their livelihoods. Each club was allowed to designate pitchers who relied on the pitch, and the two leagues compiled a list of seventeen names. They were 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 the seventeen, Coveleski, Faber, and Grimes, were later elected to the Hall of Fame. Most of the others were out of the majors within a few years.

Grimes held on the longest. He threw the last legal spitball in major league history in 1934, fourteen years after the ban. When he finally retired, the pitch that had defined an era went with him.