Rules Of Baseball Research Articles

Game-Day Pitch and Throw Count Feasibility Using a Single Sensor to Quantify Workload in Youth Baseball Players.

Pitch count recommendations are used to reduce injury risk in youth baseball pitchers and are based chiefly on expert opinion, with limited scientific support. Furthermore, they only account for pitches thrown against a hitter and do not include the total number of throws on the day a player pitched. Currently, counts are recorded manually. To provide a method using a wearable sensor to quantify total throws per game that is compliant with Little League Baseball rules and regulations. Descriptive laboratory study. Eleven male baseball players (age, 10-11 years) from an 11U (players 11 years and younger) competitive travel team were evaluated over a single summer season. An inertial sensor was placed above the midhumerus of the throwing arm and was worn during baseball games across the season. A throw identification algorithm capturing all throws and reporting linear acceleration and peak linear acceleration was used to quantify throwing intensity. Pitching charts were collected and used to verify actual pitches thrown against a hitter in a game versus all other throws identified. A total of 2748 pitches and 13,429 throws were captured. On the day a player pitched, he averaged 36 ± 18 pitches (23%) and 158 ± 106 total throws (pitches in game as well as all warm-up pitches and other throws during game). In comparison, on a day a player did not pitch, he averaged 119 ± 102 throws. Across all pitchers, 32% of all throws were low intensity, 54% were medium intensity, and 15% were high intensity. The player with one of the highest percentages of high-intensity throws did not pitch as their primary position, while the 2 players who pitched most often had the lowest percentages. Total throw count can be successfully quantified using a single inertial sensor. Total throws tended to be higher on days a player pitched compared with regular game days without pitching. This study provides a fast, feasible, and reliable method to obtain pitch and throw counts so that more rigorous research on contributing factors to arm injury in the youth athlete can be achieved.

Ulcers, Baseball, and the New Ethical Naturalism

Those involved in the current revival of ethical naturalism claim that this approach offers an escape from the inadequacy of moral relativism, especially the nihilism entailed in its denial of objective standards for our normative discourse. From this perspective, nature becomes the foundation of our moral claims. The following discussion generally ignores the logical and ideological issues involved in using nature in this way and instead shows that far from replacing moral relativism an ethics based on current evolutionist theory will ultimately lead to something like the relativist position. I then draw on the rules of baseball and their ability to govern behavior on the field to argue that we ought not necessarily despair our failure to locate an objective basis for our moral theories. Politics and our polilical institutions function in much the same capacity as the baseball establishment: they provide the rules by which the game should be played and the power to enforce compliance.

Strike Four: The Evolution of Baseball by Richard Hershberger

Reviewed by: Strike Four: The Evolution of Baseball by Richard Hershberger Lindsay John Bell Richard Hershberger. Strike Four: The Evolution of Baseball. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. 320 pp. Cloth, $38.00. Why are players allowed to overrun first base and no other bases? Why are teams allotted three outs per their half inning? Why did the National League once have the power to fire umpires? In Strike Four: The Evolution of Baseball, Richard Hershberger addresses the answers to these questions—and many more—as he explores the transformation of baseball rules from the early years of amateur play to today's professional game. His work attempts to recreate the possible questions and conversations that led to the modifications to America's Pastime. Hershberger offers a comprehensive examination of rule changes over the years, but the extent of his analysis is limited by his insular approach to the topic. Strike Four posits that any change to how people played baseball can be traced to one—or a combination—of three reasons: a desire to shorten the length of the game; increasing or decreasing the number of runs scored in a game; and aiding the umpires in performing their duties. The book's implicit argument is the contention that baseball's only constant has been change. Hershberger asserts that the evolution of the rules were small and effective tweaks that did not radically alter the play of the game at the time of the change, producing a perception by many today that baseball has never really changed at all. He arranges the chapters chronologically to reveal how slow and steady adjustments to one particular part of the game over several decades completely transformed it without creating a massive disruption to playing the sport at any point along the way. His chapters dealing with pitching illustrate this point. The sport always used a pitcher to put the ball in play, but the act of throwing the ball to a batter underwent multiple modifications that make the modern delivery nearly unrecognizable in comparison to the game's early years. The most fascinating parts of Strike Four are the anecdotes and random facts related to particular phases in the sport's history, which offer compelling stories about the rules. Hershberger discusses the meaning of "knocking a pitcher out of the box." He mentions that people's desire to play baseball on the ice in the winter contributed to a rule that allowed a baserunner to overrun first base. He also adds an intriguing point about the expansion of the umpires' jurisdiction of the strike zone by noting that the first recorded instance of a player arguing balls and strikes occurred in 1866. Accounts like these are what make Strike Four an entertaining read. Hershberger states that his work is important in-part because, "Surprisingly [End Page 127] little attention has been devoted to the evolution of the rules" (285). His assertion is correct because there is not an abundance of books devoted exclusively to baseball rules. However, his statement also reveals the main weakness of Strike Four. Baseball—and the various changes to the game's rules—did not occur in a vacuum. They are the product of economic, political, and/or cultural forces from which sports cannot be separated. He states, "Rules are changed to counter perceived problems" (269), yet perceived problems extend beyond the play on the field. The closest Hershberger comes to accounting for cultural influences on the sport comes in chapter 19 with his look at blue laws. He details that in 1931 Pennsylvania was the last state to abolish a law that prohibited Sunday baseball. At times, Hershberger appears preoccupied with the ball diamond to the point he neglects certain influential events in American history that could offer a more persuasive conclusion for certain rule changes. Divorcing his analysis of the developments in the game from the broader history of the United States removes eras like the Gilded Age. His work does not consider the effect of unbridled capitalism on all types of businesses, including baseball. Owners had interest in growing profits, which affected the game's rules at times. There are also pages with lengthy block quotes...

Reliability and Validity of Kinetic and Kinematic Parameters Determined With Force Plates Embedded Under a Soil-Filled Baseball Mound.

We developed a force measurement system in a soil-filled mound for measuring ground reaction forces (GRFs) acting on baseball pitchers and examined the reliability and validity of kinetic and kinematic parameters determined from the GRFs. Three soil-filled trays of dimensions that satisfied the official baseball rules were fixed onto 3 force platforms. Eight collegiate pitchers wearing baseball shoes with metal cleats were asked to throw 5 fastballs with maximum effort from the mound toward a catcher. The reliability of each parameter was determined for each subject as the coefficient of variation across the 5 pitches. The validity of the measurements was tested by comparing the outcomes either with the true values or the corresponding values computed from a motion capture system. The coefficients of variation in the repeated measurements of the peak forces ranged from 0.00 to 0.17, and were smaller for the pivot foot than the stride foot. The mean absolute errors in the impulses determined over the entire duration of pitching motion were 5.3N˙s, 1.9N˙s, and 8.2N˙s for the X-, Y-, and Z-directions, respectively. These results suggest that the present method is reliable and valid for determining selected kinetic and kinematic parameters for analyzing pitching performance.

God Bless Baseball by Okada Toshiki

Reviewed by: God Bless Baseball by Okada Toshiki Kee-Yoon Nahm God Bless Baseball. Written and directed by Okada Toshiki. Under the Radar Festival. Japan Society, New York. 16 January 2016. A Korean-speaking man (Lee Yoon Jae) repeatedly loses his train of thought as he tries to explain to two women (Wi Sung Hee and Nozu Aoi) the rules of baseball. The terms that confuse the women are second nature to him: inning, strike, out, first base, home plate. But knowing something does not mean you can explain it. This idea, introduced in the comic opening, ran throughout Okada Toshiki’s God Bless Baseball, presented by the Japan Society as part of the Public Theatre’s Under the Radar Festival. Despite the everyday feel, reminiscent of a weekend morning at the neighborhood park, the performance underscored the difficulty of communication. Although none of the characters seemed to notice, the performance jumped between Korean and Japanese. A pair of projection screens displayed subtitles at all times in one of the two languages plus English, calling attention to the many levels of translation and approximation (Fig. 1). Added to this was the bizarre body language of the laborious choreography, the actors warping their bodies into uncomfortable positions in ways that turned the mundane act of explaining the sport into a strangely tense endeavor. Audiences familiar with Okada’s work in two previous invitations to Under the Radar would have recognized the hyper-colloquial language and defamiliarizing physicality as his signature. They marked the triptych of one-acts, Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech (2012), performed by Okada’s own theatre company chelfitsch, and Zero Cost House (2013), a collaboration with Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre Company. The latter work was a decisive shift, overtly voicing social concerns (the Fukushima nuclear disaster) in contrast to the disillusioned apathy of earlier plays such as Five Days in March and Enjoy, both produced by American companies in New York in 2010. Whether in Japanese or in English translation, Okada’s hilariously contorted dialogue encapsulates contemporary youth culture even beyond a Japanese context. Jason Zinoman (2010), reviewing the English-language production of Enjoy for the New York Times, noted that Okada can “capture the way hipsters talk in Williamsburg, as well as in Tokyo.” God Bless Baseball, on the other hand, is about the specificity and untranslatability of cultural contexts. This was not only his most political production to date, but also painfully straightforward with its metaphors. Halfway through the performance, one of the women (Wi) stated without irony that everything onstage was “an allegory of reality.” The God Bless Baseball program (2016) noted that this international collaborative project explores “the relationship between Korea and Japan and both countries’ positions within the international state of affairs.” The work was commissioned by the Asian Arts Theatre in Gwangju, Korea, where it premiered in September 2015, followed by a run in Tokyo and then the United States. Now is both a risky and opportune time to take up this subject, as animosity escalates between the two nations, due especially to both neoconservative governments’ disastrous foreign policies on issues such as territory disputes and reparations for Korean “comfort women.” Although baseball seems [End Page 226] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Projection screens displayed subtitles at all times in one of the two languages plus English. (Photo: Courtesy of the Japan Society) [End Page 227] at first to be a dubious entry point, the performance adopted the sport’s slow pace and rhythmic waltz of defense and offense to bring clarity to the historically stormy relationship between Japan and Korea. Perhaps because of foreign presences, Okada’s characters rambled less. Instead, they calmly exchanged stories about baseball culture and the professional leagues of the two countries. There was no dramatic conflict; the questions and answers came at a leisurely pace because there was not much else to do to pass the time, besides half-hearted swings at practice throws and walks around the miniature diamond marked in white tape on the bare stage. (The only other set element was a large white installation suspended in the air upstage.) As they meandered, the characters...

Going, Going ... Gone! Exploring the Shift Toward Increasing Spectator Protection at Major League Baseball Games

Fan injuries at Major League Baseball games have been an issue for more than a century. Courts have heavily relied on stare decisis in deciding cases involving fans injured by foul balls, but have largely ignored the ever changing realities of the game. Players are bigger, faster, stronger, and bats shatter with an increasing risk of harm. Through the prevalence of cell phone use — and stadiums maximizing the technological and theatrical aspects of attending a baseball game — fans are routinely and deliberately distracted during play. Despite this, fans that are injured have little to no recourse through the judicial system because of the assumption of the risk doctrine and the accompanying “baseball rule.” Some states have enacted legislation giving even greater protection to stadium operators. Historically, Major League Baseball has been reluctant to alter its approach on fan protection as the game is rooted in a tradition that is difficult to change. However, with a new commissioner and several high profile incidents in the most recent season, Major League Baseball has revised its stance and the commissioner introduced increased netting protection recommendations. Although the policy was not a league-wide mandate, the introduced guidelines have been instituted by the owners. However, this has not sufficiently stopped injuries from occurring. Consequently, alternative remedies — such as further expansion of the netting, reworking the legal standard for recourse, or a baseball arbitration system for fans — are necessary to lessen or eradicate the impact of the archaic baseball rule that governs fan injury litigation today.

The Effects of Expertise on the Hindsight Bias

AbstractWe present data from three experiments examining the effects of objective and subjective expertise on the hindsight bias. In Experiment 1, participants read an essay about baseball or dogs and then answered questions about the baseball essay to the best of their ability, as if they had not read the essay, or to the best of their ability, although they read about dogs. Participants also completed a quiz about baseball rules and terminology, which was an objective measure of expertise. Results demonstrated that as participants' baseball expertise increased, their inability to act as if they never read the essay also increased; expertise exacerbated the hindsight bias. To test the effects of subjective expertise on hindsight bias and investigate factors underlying the relationship, participants in Experiment 2 ranked five topics in order of expertise and gave feeling‐of‐knowing (FOK) ratings for questions from these topics. Foresight participants then saw each question again and answered the questions; hindsight participants saw the questions and answers and gave the probability they would have known the answers had they not been provided. Hindsight bias increased with subjective expertise as did average FOK ratings. In Experiment 3, we experimentally manipulated perceived expertise but found that neither average FOK ratings nor hindsight bias was affected by experimentally induced expertise. Taken together, the results demonstrate that expertise exacerbates both objective and subjective hindsight bias but that an FOK, which likely exists only when expertise is naturally acquired, is necessary to engender the detrimental effect of expertise on the hindsight bias. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

One for One: A Defense of Pitcher Retaliation in Baseball

Baseball rules prohibit pitchers from intentionally throwing at batters. When a pitcher does so, however, it is common practice for a pitcher on the opposing team to retaliate by throwing at the first player of the offending team to bat the next inning, and for umpires to ignore the rule forbidding that. I argue that (1) player retaliation in the form of one for one is a better response to the initial violation than any other that is available, (2) one for one can be justified as payback and for anticipated good consequences, and (3) everyone who becomes a professional baseball player has consented to the practice. From these claims, I conclude that one for one is in the best interest of baseball, it is best if umpires follow common practice and wink at the rule forbidding it, and players cannot complain if they are told to throw at batters in certain circumstances, or are thrown at in just those circumstances.

Optimal batting orders in run-limit-rule baseball: a Markov chain approach

Amateur baseball contests, particularly those involving young players, often feature a run limit, which establishes a maximum number of runs that may be scored in a half-inning of play. Although conventional wisdom can be used for designing the batting order under standard baseball rules, the composition of the optimal lineup under run limit is still unclear, and the best batting order could differ significantly from the traditional ordering. In this paper, we consider the impact of run limits on the design of the optimal batting order, by developing a Markov chain model for calculating the expected number of runs scored (ENRS) under 3- and 5-run limits. We apply this model to both a high-quality and a lower-quality team, using the data from the 2011 Little League World Series, and illustrate the effect of run limit on the ENRS and the optimal batting order.

Susan Byrne Law and History in Cervantes’ Don QuixoteLaw and History in Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Susan Byrne. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Pp. xiv+240.

<i>Susan Byrne</i> Law and History in Cervantes’ <i>Don Quixote</i><i>Law and History in Cervantes’ <i>Don Quixote</i></i>. Susan Byrne. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Pp. xiv+240.

Necessity of Baseball Rule System regarding the Unwritten Rules of Professional Baseball and Cases

Necessity of Baseball Rule System regarding the Unwritten Rules of Professional Baseball and Cases

Historical dictionary of baseball

The Historical Dictionary of Baseball contains a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 900 cross-referenced entries on the roles of the players on the field-batters, pitchers, fielders-as well as non-playing personnel-general managers, managers, coaches, and umpires. There are also entries for individual teams and leagues, stadiums and ballparks, the role of the draft and reserve clause, and baseball's rules, and statistical categories. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the sport of baseball.

Fixing the Froward Court

A lesson in constitutional interpretation can be learned from baseball. Suppose that umpires were divided between strict constructionists and liberal constructionists of the Official Baseball Rules of major-league baseball. Under that circumstance, there would be Original Rules umpires (e.g., Scalia; Thomas), and there would be Living Rules umpires (e.g., Kagan; Sotomayor).An Original Rules umpire would consider himself bound by the Official Baseball Rules. A Living Rules umpire would allow himself to interpret the Official Baseball Rules dynamically.The United States Supreme Court is, and will continue to be, a political institution which decides policy questions. Therefore, it is necessary to curb the decision-making authority of that court. Two proposals are made.

野球における報復死球の是非について：責任概念からの検討をとおして

In baseball games, there are instances where a pitcher deliberately targets a batsman of the opposing team with a pitch in order to retaliate against a previous strike on their own player by the opposing team. The present study focusing on major league baseball aimed to clarify the nature of the responsibility sensed a pitcher who finds himself in a similar position after a batsman on his team has taken an intentional hit from the opposing team's pitcher in order to analyze the structure of the pitcher's dilemma. We looked at the situation not only from the viewpoint in which the pitcher's responsibility is considered an obligation, as proposed by Takikawa, but also from the obligations concept proposed by Sandel. We found that there is a responsibility to comply with the official baseball rules to discourage any retaliatory hit on a batsman in order to avoid any intentional injury to a member of the opponent's team. On the other hand, responsibility for an intentional hit on a batman can be considered an obligation in order to implement an unwritten rule that condones such retaliatory action. Therefore the structure of the responsibility is considered to be an obligation that generates a dilemma for the pitcher and promotes conflict. On this basis, the difficulty of resolving the problem related to a retaliatory hit was highlighted. Furthermore, the possibility of analysis in accordance with the responsibility concept for ethical issues in sport was suggested. We discuss the concept of responsibility as an obligation that presents a conflict, and consider which course of action should have priority in such cases.

Umpires as Legal Realists

AbstractDuring his confirmation hearings, then-judge John Roberts analogized the role of a judge to the role of a baseball umpire. Roberts argued that umpires do not make the rules; they simply apply them. Legal scholars have criticized Roberts from a legal realist perspective because the analogy misconstrues the nature of judging as formalistic. I believe Roberts also misconstrued the nature of umpiring as formalistic. Like judges, umpires must rely on their experience, rather than logic, because the rules of baseball are sometimes incomplete, indeterminate, and contradictory. On occasion, umpires even ignore the rulebook (justifiably). The judges-as-umpires analogy thus illustrates the differences between legal formalism and legal realism in a way that students can more easily understand.

A29 野球打撃動作における上肢キネティクスの打点高対応様式について(打撃動作II)

The purpose of this study was to clarify the kinetic role of the upper limbs under conditions of different hitting-point heights in the baseball T-batting motion through inverse kinetic analysis. Twenty-three collegiate male baseball players' motion were captured with VICON MX system (12-camera, 250Hz), and kinetic data at each hand were collected by using an instrumented bat equipped with 28 strain gauges (lOOOHz). Three heights of hitting point (high, middle, low) were set according to the baseball rules. The joint torques and works of the upper limbs were divided into the values caused by horizontal and vertical component offerees exerted on the bat by each hand. The results show that (1) the hitting point motion of bat were modified mainly with translational movement of the bat, and a significant difference occurs in the forces of each hand in the vertical direction under the height conditions, (2) the barrel side upper limb contributes to adjust the bat height from the analysis of joint torques caused by horizontal component of bat force, (3) shoulder joints are great contributors to adjust the bat height in the down swing phase from the analysis of joint torques caused by vertical component of bat forces, and (4) the role of elbow joint of the barrel-side upper limb is to control the bat head movement because the work done by the joint was negative values.

A12 打点高の異なる野球打撃動作における上半身のキネティクス的分析(野球(投打))

The purpose of this study was to clarify the role of each upper limb and trunk joints to the hitting point height in the baseball T-batting motion through inverse kinetic analysis. Twenty three collegiate male baseball players' motion were captured VICON MX system (12-camera, 250Hz), and kinetic data at each hand were collected by using an instrumented bat equipped with 28 strain gauges (1000Hz). Three heights of hitting point (high, middle, low) were set according to the baseball rules. Kinetic analysis procedures were carried out to estimate joint torques, joint torque powers and works of upper limbs and trunk. From the results obtained in this study, in case of low hitting point, joint torque of flexion-extension axis of shoulder and elbow on bat head side were larger than those of the other hitting points during down swing phase. It was indicated that the role of the head-side upper limb was to adjust the different hitting point. On the other hands, the knob-side upper limb and rotation of torso joint contribute to the acceleration of the bat head during forward swing.

Pete Rose and Baseball's Rule 21

The paper re-examines Pete Rose's claim for inclusion into baseball's Hall of Fame. It suggests MLB overstates the importance of Rule 21, its ban on gambling. The paper was presented at the annual meeting of a baseball history society and will be published in their periodical entitled Nine: Journal of Baseball History and Culture.

Twice Perfect: Jean Faut of the South Bend Blue Sox

In his book Perfect: The Inside Story of Sixteen Perfect Games, James Buckley Jr. describes the rarity of the game: since the founding of the National League in 1876 to 2002, opposing pitchers have had over 340,000 opportunities (170,000 games) to throw perfect games, but only sixteen had done so. That equates to approximately one in every 21,250 opportunities. No Major League pitcher has ever been perfect twice in his professional career, and many of the greatest have never done so even once. The feat is, indeed, one of the rarest of any athletic accomplishment. (1) The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) existed from 1943 through 1954. It was the highest level of professional baseball ever afforded women. In its twelve-year history, some six hundred of the greatest female athletes were paid to play a game once the exclusive domain of men. During that time, only five perfect games occurred out of 9,578 opportunities (or once in every 1,916 chances), three during the underhand pitching period (1943-47) and two during the period when overhand pitching was adopted throughout the League (1948-54). Incredibly, both of these latter games were pitched by one person, Jean Faut of the South Bend Blue Sox. (2) This feisty righthander was one of the most dominant pitchers in the history of the AAGPBL. During her eight-year career with the Blue Sox (1946-53), she compiled a lifetime record of 140-64 with a mind-boggling 1.23 ERA. She never had a losing season or an ERA above 1.51. She was named the league's player-of-the-year twice (1951 and 1953), was a four-time all-star, was second in the league in career wins, held the league record for single-season winning percentage with a .909 (20-2) in 1952, and led the Blue Sox to consecutive league championships in 1951 and 1952. When compared with Major League pitchers, she ranks first in ERA and fourth in winning percentage (.686). (3) Comparing the level of play in the AAGPBL to that found in the Major Leagues is a little like comparing apples to oranges. Men are stronger, hit with more power, have better overall batting averages, and field better than their female counterparts. For these reasons, some would argue that it is more difficult to pitch a perfect game in the Major Leagues than it was in the AAGPBL. However, considering the conditions under which the women played, Faut's two perfect games are all the more remarkable. While the dimensions of the field were smaller and the hitters less powerful and skilled with the bat, equipment and rules changed continually throughout the existence of the league, often from year to year, sometimes even in midseason. When the league started in 1943, it was basically fast-pitch softball played under some of the rules of baseball. Runners, for example, could take a lead off base and steal, but the ball was a soft twelve inches in circumference. Basepaths were much shorter (sixty-five feet) and the pitching distance much closer (forty feet). Distances and ball dimensions evolved drastically, so that by the final season of the league in 1954, it was almost exactly like regulation baseball. Pitching itself changed over the years: it began as underhand, graduated to sidearm in 1946-47, and moved fully to overhand in 1948. Many of the pitchers in the earlier period were experienced submariners who could not make the transition to the overhand style. Consequently, many teams converted their position players--especially outfielders--to pitchers since they were used to throwing the ball overhand with power. Batters, too, had to make adjustments, since underhand throws tend to rise, overhand to drop. (4) All of these changes were designed to make the game more exciting and more like men's baseball. Fast-pitch underhand softball is generally a very pitcher-dominated game with low scores and correspondingly low batting averages. As the women's game evolved more toward baseball, more runs were produced. …

The Cincinnati Reds , and: The Cleveland Indians (review)

Reviewed by: The Cincinnati Reds, and: The Cleveland Indians Randy Roberts The Cincinnati Reds. By Lee Allen. (1948; reprint, Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2006. xviii, 315 pp. Paper $18.00, ISBN 0-87338-886-0.) The Cleveland Indians. By Franklin Lewis. (1949; reprint, Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2006. xviii, 286 pp. Paper $18.00, ISBN 0-87338-885-2.) [End Page 133] What can a reviewer say about two team histories, one published in 1948 and the other in 1949? Reading Lee Allen's The Cincinnati Reds and Franklin Lewis's The Cleveland Indians, I get the sense that the game was somehow more vivid, that the grass was greener, the skies were bluer, the heroes purer, the characters of the game funnier. Each book has scenes that are so archetypically baseball, so soaked in the lore of the game, that they read like something from Bernard Malamud's The Natural or Mark Harris's Bang the Drum Slowly. For instance, take the luncheon of the Cleveland brass in a suite at the Terminal Tower in the spring of 1936. Team president Alva Bradley went around the table asking questions, assessing the upcoming season. Eventually he got around to C. C. "Cy" Slapnicka, his new assistant. "Slap, tell them about that young pitcher you signed." Slap cleared his throat and began, "Gentleman, I found the greatest young pitcher I ever saw. I suppose this sounds like old stuff to you, but I want to tell you to believe me. This boy that I found out in Iowa will be the greatest pitcher the world has ever known." Slap's modest bravado rings a bit of Roy Hobbs in The Natural when he announces that he plans to be the best that ever was. There is something so pure about it. A general manager who still had farm dirt under his fingernails discovers a right-handed farm boy from Iowa who throws the ball faster than the eye can follow it. The boy is a phenomenon who averaged nineteen strikeouts a game in summer ball, a boy with all the promise of America. Of course, Slapnicka's boy was Bob Feller, and arguably he was as good as any pitcher ever. But Lewis's story is only partially true. He left out the fact that the Cleveland organization violated baseball's rules for signing pre-college amateurs and tried to cover up its action through a complex bookkeeping scheme. Lewis's version is fun to read, but for today's readers it seems not so much naive as it does intentionally sanitized. To some degree this is because Lewis was part of the organization. A sportswriter for the Cleveland Press in the 1940s and 1950s, he was as necessary to the team as batboys and equipment managers. He traveled with the team, ate with the players and coaches, and probably knew where all the skeletons were hidden. In his columns he praised and criticized the actions on the field and in the boardroom, but he never tried to damage the image of baseball as the great American pastime. He was a sportswriter by vocation but a fan by choice. He often asked why his team wasn't better and repeatedly offered opinions on how to improve the Indians, but he never questioned the foundations of professional sports or the culture of baseball. Lee Allen viewed baseball from the same perspective as Lewis. A native [End Page 134] of Cincinnati, he served for a time as the director of publicity for the Reds, wrote about baseball for a series of newspapers, and eventually became the historian for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Known as "Baseball's Walking Encyclopedia," Allen loved the sport, working tirelessly to preserve its statistics and stories. As much as anyone else, he was responsible for the Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia, the magisterial final word for millions of bar bets. When he wrote The Cincinnati Reds, no one knew the story better, and few could tell it as well. From the Red Stockings 1869 tour through the struggling early period and tainted 1919 World Series victory to the World War II decline...