Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 23, 1993 TAG: 9307230022
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HAL BOCK ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
The stuff is sticky. That's the main quality of pine tar. It is dark and sticky, a substance with extremely limited uses, and 10 years ago, an abundance of it on George Brett's bat mired baseball in a gooey mess.
Now understand that before batting gloves and batting helmets, ever since the first pitch was thrown in anger, hitters have used pine tar to improve the grip on their bats. It is routine, like the pitcher using a resin bag.
The problem with Brett is that he bathed his bat in the stuff, far up the handle and beyond the trademark, well past the 18 inches allowed in the rulebook. Nobody ever said anything about it, Brett being Brett. It was one of those rules that baseball sort of winked at.
Then, on July 24, 1983 - a brilliant Sunday afternoon in Yankee Stadium - the wink became a blink and it was as if the pine tar had splattered all over the place.
Some weeks before, Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles had noticed Brett's bat and that nasty stain spread all over the barrel. "I knew there was a rule about too much tar on the bat because Thurman Munson once had a hit and an RBI taken away because of it," Nettles said.
He also knew baseball could occasionally get picky about bats because he was called out the year before when one of his broke and a supply of rubber balls came bouncing out.
So Nettles went to manager Billy Martin with the pine tar information. "He decided we wouldn't use it until Brett hurt us, until the right moment."
With the Yankees in Kansas City in early July, Brett came to the plate in a game-winning situation and Martin waved Goose Gossage in from the Yankee bullpen. "I remember Nettles telling me, `If he gets a hit, get the bat,' " Gossage said.
No problem. Brett's pine tar bat notwithstanding, Goose's gas won the dramatic showdown. The Yankees went about their business, saying nothing.
Two weeks later, the Royals were in New York. Once again, as it frequently did before and after, the game came down to Brett vs. Gossage. With two out in the ninth inning and the Yankees leading by one run, Kansas City had the tying run on base.
On the mound, Gossage thought briefly about the pine tar. "In the back of my mind, I knew that if he got a hit, I had to get the bat," the reliever said. "I didn't want to test the rule, though."
At third base, Nettles admits he wasn't thinking about Brett's bat. "I had forgotten about it," he said.
In the Yankees dugout, Billy Martin had not forgotten.
Brett and Gossage had a history. In 1980, Brett had hit a three-run homer against Gossage in Yankee Stadium, clinching the playoffs and a ticket to the World Series for the Royals. Now they were at it again. "I didn't come in intending to throw it down the middle," Gossage said. "But a guy like me, I'm coming right after him."
Again, Brett caught one of Gossage's fastballs and sent it soaring toward the right field seats.
Home run!
Not so fast.
Brett was into his home run trot, still going around the bases, when Martin arrived at home plate, where rookie umpire Tim McClelland was about to find himself in one terrible mess. "Billy was on my shoulder, yelling, `You've got to call him out! There's too much pine tar!' "
Rule 1:10(c) says: "The bat handle, for not more than 18 inches from its end, may be covered or treated with any material or substance to improve the grip. Any such material or substance, which extends past the 18-inch limitation shall cause the bat to be removed from the game."
Yankees catcher Rick Cerone had one end of Brett's bat and Martin had the other. Brett, meanwhile, was blithely circling the bases in triumph. "When I touched home plate, I didn't realize Billy Martin was already out there, arguing," Brett said.
McClelland looked at the bat. "For us," the umpire said, "the sightline is the trademark. It was way past. I told Billy, `I'll handle it, relax.' "
The rookie ump gathered the rest of the crew, Drew Coble, Nick Bremigan and crew chief Joe Brinkman. "I got the crew together for two things," he said. "First, am I interpreting the rule correctly, and do they see the same thing I do?"
Since umpires do not routinely carry tape measures, it was decided to use home plate to measure Brett's bat. "The plate is 17 inches across," McClelland said. "We measured it by that and the pine tar was at least six to eight inches above that."
By then, Brett was aware that something was up. "I get back to the dugout and see the commotion and somebody said something about me corking my bat," he said. "I said I didn't do that, they're way off line. Then they checked for pine tar, and I said if they call me out for that, I'm going to run out there and kill every one of them."
Brinkman, as senior man on the crew, offered to make the call. McClelland declined, saying, "No, it's my call." With that, he pointed the bat at the dugout and signalled what effectively was the final out of the game.
"I didn't mean to make it dramatic," McClelland said. "The only thing I'd do differently is call the manager out to explain the call."
Predictably, Brett went ballistic, racing out of the dugout in a straight line for McClelland. It took two umpires to hold him off.
"I reacted accordingly," he said. "You know, I lost it for five or ten minutes. I was hyperventilating. I couldn't breathe when I got to the locker room."
For his part, McClelland said, he was not concerned for his own safety. "I'm 6-foot-6 and weigh 250 pounds," the ump said. "I'm wearing equipment and holding a bat."
While Brett was screaming, "You can't do that!" teammate Gaylord Perry, a more pragmatic sort, grabbed the bat and passed it to coach Rocky Colavito. "He raised it over his head," McClelland said. "I thought he was going to hit me."
The evidence made it down the dugout runway but never got to the Royals clubhouse. Brinkman and McClelland recovered it and retreated to their dressing room with it. Knowing they were in a hornet's nest, the umps put the bat in a corner. "That thing's got to go down to the league offices tomorrow," Brinkman said.
Each of the umps were headed elsewhere and suddenly all of them were looking at their clubhouse attendant, Steve Gregory. Brinkman said, "We can trust you, Steve."
That night, Gregory drove home with the wrapped hot bat. "My wife saw me coming with it and said, `Did anybody follow you?' The next morning, I took the subway downtown. Everybody was reading about the bat in the papers and there I was, standing there with it."
Meanwhile, McClelland headed for the airport. As luck would have it, his gate was past the one where the Royals were waiting for their charter flight. "Talk about dirty looks," the ump said. "I went over to George and said I did what I had to do. He said, `They can fine me. They can suspend me. It's just not right.' "
American League president Lee MacPhail agreed with Brett. Four days later, he reversed the umpire, allowing the home run to stand and ordering the game's last four outs to be completed.
The umpires were not amused.
"We did what the rule said," McClelland said. "We had the rule. MacPhail said, `Though the umpires were technically correct, it wasn't in the spirit of the rules.' We can't rule on spirit. We ruled on the letter of the rule.
"They changed the rule that winter. If we were wrong, why change it? It was not a good rule. That's not our job to decide. We did what we had to do. The rules were in our corner."
Gossage figures the turmoil of those Yankees with Martin and owner George Steinbrenner worked against New York in l'affaire pine tar.
"A rule is a rule," Gossage said. "It was always a battle with the league. We never got a break because it was the Yankees, Billy and George. They just threw the rulebook away, like it didn't matter.
"If it was not Yankees and if it was not Brett, the guy's out. He used an illegal bat. It's like getting caught with a scuffed ball. I think the hitter and the team, outside influences other than what is stated in the rule book, decided that."
On Aug. 18, the Royals returned to New York for a bizarre four-out completion of the game. The league anticipated Martin would claim that in the confusion, Brett had not touched all the bases on his homer. "We signed an affidavit declaring that he had," McClelland said. When Martin tried the ploy, umpire Davey Phillips, standing in for Brinkman's crew, whipped out the affidavit.
Blocked there, Martin produced a lineup that included pitcher Ron Guidry in center field, replacing Jerry Mumphrey, who had been traded in the interim, and left-handed Don Mattingly at second base, replacing Bert Campaneris, who had gone on the disabled list. The whole exercise lasted 16 pitches and less than 10 minutes before the Royals' victory was official.
Brett got the bat back after MacPhail issued his decision, but broke it in Milwaukee two weeks later. It sits in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown.
"I use bats now that are just about as bad," he said. "On occasion, the umpires will tell me to clean my bat up, but if they allow you to hit with it and then they protest, that's not good enough."
That's because the rulebook now includes a clarification below 1:10 (c).
It says: "NOTE: If the umpire discovers that the bat does not conform to (c) above until a time during or after which the bat has been used in play, it shall not be grounds for declaring the batter out, or ejected from the game."
by CNB