Use of Pine Tar in Baseball
See also: Gorilla Gold Grip EnhancerIn baseball, pine tar is applied to the handles of baseball bats. Because of its texture, pine tar improves a batter's grip on the bat and prevents the bat from slipping out of the batter's hands during hard swings. It also helps hitters because they do not have to grip the bat as hard and in result the hitter gets more "pop".
Rule 1.10(c) of the 2002 Official Rules of Major League Baseball states that batters may apply pine tar only from the handle of the bat extending up for 18 inches. The most famous example of the rule being applied is the Pine Tar Game, the July 24, 1983 game between the Kansas City Royals and New York Yankees in which George Brett hit a home run to put the Royals ahead 5-4. Yankees manager Billy Martin immediately protested that Brett's bat had more than 18 inches of pine tar. The umpires called Brett out and nullified the home run. However, league president Lee MacPhail overruled the umpires. MacPhail said that the pine tar restriction wasn't about competitive advantage, but economics. If too much pine tar was on the bat, pine tar would end up on the ball and render it unusable for play. MacPhail said that the umpires shouldn't have taken the home run off the board, but simply discarded the bat. The game was resumed from the point of the home run, and the Royals won.
Pine tar is also sometimes used by pitchers in baseball to improve grip on the ball in cold weather, although it is questionable whether it gives a pitcher any competitive advantage. However, the application of any foreign substance to a ball is expressly prohibited by 8.02 of the MLB Official Rules, and, if caught, results in an automatic eight-game suspension.
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Famous quotes containing the words pine, tar and/or baseball:
“Before I finally went into winter quarters in November, I used to resort to the north- east side of Walden, which the sun, reflected from the pitch pine woods and the stony shore, made the fireside of the pond; it is so much pleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than by an artificial fire. I thus warmed myself by the still glowing embers which the summer, like a departed hunter, had left.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I,
The gunner and his mate,
Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian and Margery,
But none of us cared for Kate;
For she had a tongue with a tang,
Would cry to a sailor, ‘Go hang!’
She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch,
Yet a tailor might scratch her where’er she did itch:
Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I’ve gradually risen from lower-class background to lower-class foreground.”
—Marvin Cohen, U.S. author and humorist. Baseball the Beautiful, Links Books (1970)