Intentional Balk: Baseball's Thin Line Between Innovation and Cheating by Daniel R. Levitt & Mark Armour (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Intentional Balk: Baseball's Thin Line Between Innovation and Cheating by Daniel R. Levitt & Mark Armour Ed Edmonds Daniel R. Levitt & Mark Armour. Intentional Balk: Baseball's Thin Line Between Innovation and Cheating. Seattle, WA: Clyde Hill Publishing, 2022. 258 pp. Paperback, $24.99. Dan Levitt and Mark Armour, who have previously collaborated on two outstanding books on the building of winning Major League Baseball franchises, have turned their powers of fresh and thoughtful observations, added tremendous research, and combined it with excellent writing to produce an engaging take on an interesting thesis—when does innovation create an opportunity to cheat and gain an advantage over your opponent? Even though the origin of baseball has spawned many theories and explanations, one thing is certain—players [End Page 137] and management have consistently cheated or, at a minimum, pushed beyond the outer limits of the "rules" (both official and unwritten) to gain an edge over an opponent. Some "cheating" is actually applauded and honored while other "cheating" behavior is disliked and even loathed. Levitt and Armour's book explores, in detail, this long history while also investigating the different reactions by players, management, and fans. First and quite importantly, Levitt and Armour set out their thesis and their definition of cheating clearly for their readers—"We broadly define 'cheating' as an act of breaking agreed-upon rules in order to help your team win. By this reckoning, throwing a World Series or recreational drug use, which do not help your team, are not 'cheating' as defined here" (x). The authors use an effective concept of naming doctrines after players, managers, or coaches who embody a response to their thesis. The first one is named for Rogers Hornsby—"Baseball players and others within the game will and should find ways to bend and break the rules. It is the job of the authorities to stop them." (ix). This establishes an interesting dichotomy at the heart of the conversation. Players should try anything and everything either on the edge of or clearly outside of the rules. It is the jobs of umpires or league officials to detect such behavior and punish or discipline as appropriate. The initial chapter focuses on deception, typically involving attempts to fool the umpire, e.g., a fielder acting as if he caught the ball when he had trapped it, a batter claiming he was hit by a pitch when he was not, or a catcher's practice of pitch framing where he tries to convince the umpire that a pitch that is a ball is a strike. An early example of this was the rule requiring that pitchers throw underhanded and keep their release point at or below their hip. Pitchers, knowing that an overhand delivery was harder to hit, pushed the definition of underhanded in various ways, and some pitchers resorted to hiking up their pants to fool the umpire and the batter. Ultimately, the rules were simply changed to allow overhand pitching. The second chapter concentrates on the use of binoculars and telescopes to steal signs. When German optical manufacturer Zeiss started selling improved prism binoculars in 1894, Phillies catcher Morgan Murphy, nearing the end of his career just five years later, used an expensive pair to decode the opposing team's signs and relay the information from the manager's suite in centerfield to the batter. Later in the book Levitt and Armour discuss the use of advanced video analytics allowing a pitcher to experiment with different sticky substances or grips to improve the hurler's ability to increase swings-and-misses or weaker hits. One particularly effective use of a sticky substance [End Page 138] from another sports setting is the use of Spider Tack, created to help strongmen lift Atlas Stones and to improve a pitcher's grip, increasing spin rates and late ball movement. In the aftermath of the Astros trashcan banging, sign-stealing scandal, Commissioner Rob Manfred finally increased efforts to detect and punish pitchers who were doctoring the baseball, a nod to the author's Hornsby Doctrine. Chapter five focuses on bat modifications—corking bats to lighten weight, adding nails or other metal to increase weight, grooving the...