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Summary
Summary
Everyone knows that baseball is a game of intricate regulations, but it turns out to be even more complicated than we realize. What truly governs the Major League game is a set of unwritten rules, some of which are openly discussed and some of which only a minority of players are aware of. In The Baseball Codes, old-timers and all-time greats share their insights into the games most hallowed, and least known, traditions. For learned and casual baseball fans alike, the result is illuminating and wholly entertaining. At the heart of this book are incredible, often hilarious stories involving national heroes, like Mickey Mantle, and notorious headhunters, like Bob Gibson, in a century-long series of confrontations over respect, honor, and the soul of the game. Here we see for the first time the game through the eyes of the players on the field.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Nearly as long as baseball has existed in its current form, so too have unofficial rules that professional players have strictly adhered to. Yet as Turnbow demonstrates in this highly entertaining read, every rule of the code has certain variations. Most casual baseball fans are keenly aware of many topics that Turnbow broaches, and some are universally agreed upon-hitters admiring home runs is severely frowned on, as is arguing with one's manager in public view and being caught stealing signs. But other rules are less cut-and-dried. On the subject of retaliating for a teammate being hit by a pitch: some believe the pitcher should be plunked in his next at-bat, while others say it should be a player with corresponding talent to the hit batter. Turnbow has an example for nearly every conceivable situation, and with quotes from dozens of former major league players, managers, and broadcasters, the reader can better understand the actions that can set off even the most even-tempered ball player. It's a comprehensive, sometimes hilarious guide to perhaps a misunderstood aspect of our national pastime, and will come in handy should one ever be involved in a beanball war. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Turbow and Duca have filled a void with this entertaining, revealing survey of the varied, sometimes inscrutable unwritten rules that govern the way baseball is played by the pros. The authors add a lot of flavoring here by naming names and instances, both long past and more recent. Great stuff on how and when to retaliate, how to slide, how to give way to a relief pitcher, talking (or not) during a no-hitter, whether to join an on-field brawl (no question, you join in), and the ethics of cheating (former Orioles manager Earl Weaver once told struggling pitcher Ross Grimsley during a game: If you know how to cheat, this would be a good time to start ). The authors both write on baseball for various publications, and Duca is an official scorekeeper for major league baseball lament a certain unraveling of baseball's codes, due to changes in the game itself, while insisting that they're still essentially intact. For committed fans who want to dig deeper.--Moores, Alan Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
PROFESSIONAL baseball is a society, of sorts, and "The Baseball Codes" is a book of casual sociology. The premise is that ballplayers, managers, coaches and various other participants in the culture of baseball are all clued in to a value system, a mode of behavior that defines a gauzy ideal: the right way to play the game. That phrase in itself needs explaining. If you're not fluent in sportspeak, you might think the right way to play would involve skills - techniques for a hitter's taking the outside pitch to the opposite field, say. Or maybe it would involve rules. But no. As the savvy fan knows, the right way to play refers to being a proper baseball citizen - that is, showing respect for your opponents, your teammates and the game itself, whether or not you hit .300 or your team makes it to the World Series. Jason Turbow and Michael Duca, obvious baseball obsessives from the San Francisco Bay Area, have collected dozens of stories from baseball history about situations that are not governed by the rule book but that pertain to the fuzzy notions of rightness and respect and that describe the contours of the so-called baseball codes. When is it legitimate for a pitcher to knock down a hitter? When is it unsportsmanlike for a base runner to steal a base? Spitballs may not be legal, but are they ethical? Why might a player lie to his manager? Is it ever O.K. not to join your teammates when a brawl starts on the field? And how about stealing your opponent's signs? Is it proper? Always? Are some methods of thievery more tolerable than others? For true baseball-niks, the discussions of these issues won't be especially enlightening. With so many former athletes now in the broadcast booth, the unwritten rules of the game get a pretty regular airing. (Disappointingly for a book that devotes a substantial section to cheating, there is no discussion at all of steroid use.) But the stories the authors have unearthed to illustrate ballpark justice and morality are often delicious. It won't be news, for example, that when your team is ahead by seven runs in the eighth inning, it's bad form to swing at a 3-0 pitch. (For the unimmersed: The pitcher will most likely throw the ball right down the middle in order to get a strike, and taking advantage of this when your team is way ahead is considered rubbing it in.) To do so is to invite retribution; sometime soon - that inning, the next inning, tomorrow's game - the opposing team's pitcher will be aiming a fastball at you or a teammate. BUT it is entertaining to learn that in 2006, Torii Hunter, the splendid outfielder then with the Minnesota Twins (he now plays for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim), made just that mistake against the Boston Red Sox. And that after the game, to palliate the feelings of their opponents and prevent an act of revenge, the Twins' manager, Ron Gardenhire, brought Hunter to the Red Sox clubhouse, like a parent teaching a 6-year-old a lesson, to apologize to the team's manager, Terry Francona. Gardenhire is quoted as having said that he wanted Francona "to know we didn't give a sign for him to swing away, that Torii just made a mistake." He added, "I thought that it was good for Torii to explain it to him, so I took him over." The authors offer stories like this in a spirit of romanticism, as though matters of violating and adhering to the codes of the game were enmeshed in its glorious tradition. But readers who are lesser fans may have limited tolerance for such minor episodes of baseball life, especially since what is collectively revealed is how thin-skinned, pouty, childish, vulgar and vengeful the baseball codes condition participants to be. The main dictum seems to be that even though you're trying to beat your opponents' brains in, you have to do it in a mannerly fashion, and if you don't, you're dead meat. How players follow this principle takes some interesting forms, and in many places "The Baseball Codes" reads like a lab report by a psychologist who has been observing hostile toddlers whack one another with plastic shovels in a sandbox. Nolan Ryan was so put off if a batter dared to bunt and make him field his position, the authors write, that he'd knock him down with his 100-mile-per-hour fastball. If a hitter smacks a home run and stands a little too long in the batter's box admiring his feat, the pitcher - it doesn't matter who - may be so ticked off that he'll take the next opportunity to drill the guy. Ditto if a hitter tries to sneak a peek at the catcher's signs. If one of your teammates is hit with a pitch, it's incumbent on you, as a pitcher, to retaliate and nail one of their guys. Bob Gibson settled a grudge against one player 15 years after the fact, hitting him with a pitch in an old-timers' game. In 1976, Frank Robinson, then a player-manager with the Cleveland Indians, sent a pitcher, Bob Reynolds, to the Toledo Mud Hens, a ... affiliate, and when the Indians played the Mud Hens in an exhibition game, Reynolds, still miffed, threw a pitch over Robinson's head. "Robinson's response wasn't standard fare for most management types," the authors write. "After grounding out, he walked to the mound and punched Reynolds twice, felling him with the second blow." No punishment for Robinson was forthcoming. The general manager of the Indians shrugged off the event. "Things like this happen in baseball from time to time," he said. Bruce Weber, a reporter at The Times, is the author of "As They See 'Em: A Fan's Travels in the Land of Umpires," which has just been published in paperback.
Library Journal Review
Baseball's official rules can confuse. What about the unwritten codes of play? They're a harsher set of principles, lacking the charm or eccentric appeal of the official ones. We know some of these, e.g., never rub the spot where you've been hit by a pitch. Turbow and Duca explain the evolution of these codes, with violations often unforgotten and unforgiven by the opposing team. Remember when Rickey Henderson stole second late in a game when his team was ahead 12-5, and he wasn't being held to the bag? A cheap steal for his stats. Code violation. While there are traces of folklore and fair play here, much of this code culture simply comes across as disheartening aggression. But if you like to study these realities of the game, this will appeal. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter 7 Don't Show Players Up It was a simple question. From the batter's box at Candlestick Park, Willie Mays looked at Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford and, pointing toward Mickey Mantle in center field, asked, "What's that crazy bastard clapping about?" What that crazy bastard was clapping about only tangentially concerned Mays, but the Giants superstar didn't know that at the time. It was the 1961 All-Star Game, and Ford had just struck Mays out, looking, to end the first inning. The question was posed when Ford passed by Mays as the American League defense returned to the dugout--most notably among them Mantle, hopping and applauding every step of the way, as if his team had just won the World Series. There was a good story behind it, but that didn't much matter in the moment. Willie Mays was being shown up in front of a national baseball audience. Under ordinary circumstances there is no acceptable reason for a player to embarrass one of his colleagues on the field. It's the concept at the core of the unwritten rules, helping dictate when it is and isn't appropriate to steal a base, how one should act in the batter's box after hitting a home run, and what a player should or shouldn't say to the media. Nobody likes to be shown up, and baseball's Code identifies the notion in virtually all its permutations. Mantle's display should never have happened, and Mays knew it. Mantle had been joyous for a number of reasons. There was the strikeout itself, which was impressive because to that point Mays had hit Ford like he was playing slow-pitch softball--6-for-6 lifetime, with two homers, a triple, and an astounding 2.167 slugging percentage, all in All- Star competition. Also, Ford and Mantle had spent the previous night painting the town in San Francisco in their own inimitable way, and Ford, still feeling the effects of overindulgence, was hoping simply to survive the confrontation. Realizing that he had no idea how to approach a Mays at-bat, the left-hander opened with a curveball; Mays responded by pummeling the pitch well over four hundred feet, just foul. Ford, bleary and already half beaten, didn't see a downside to more of the same, and went back to the curve. This time Mays hit it nearly five hundred feet, but again foul. It became clear to the pitcher that he couldn't win this battle straight up--so he dipped into his bag of tricks. Though Ford has admitted to doctoring baseballs in later years, at that point in his career he wasn't well practiced in the art. Still, he was ahead in the count, it was an exhibition game, and Mays was entitled to at least one more pitch. Without much to lose, Ford spat on his throwing hand, then pretended to wipe it off on his shirt. When he released the ball, it slid rotation-free from between his fingers and sailed directly at Mays's head, before dropping, said Ford, "from his chin to his knees" through the strike zone. Mays could do nothing but gape and wait for umpire Stan Landes to shoot up his right hand and call strike three. To this point in the story, nobody has been shown up at all. Ford may have violated baseball's actual rules by loading up a spitter, but cheating is fairly well tolerated within the Code. Mays's reaction to the extreme break of the pitch may have made him look bad, but that was hardly Ford's fault. But then came Mantle, jumping and clapping like a kid who'd just been handed tickets to the circus. It didn't much matter that the spectacle was directed not at Mays but at Giants owner Horace Stoneham, who immediately understood the motivation behind Mantle's antics. Stoneham had gone out of his way to make Mantle and Ford feel at home upon their arrival in town a day earlier, using his connec Excerpted from The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: the Unwritten Rules of America's Pastime by Michael Duca, Jason Turbow All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
