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The Effect of the American Ball

The baseball programme for nineteen hundred and eight having been concluded, we may now regard the effect of the newly constructed baseball.

You may recall that the old Dukes baseball has been retired, in the interest of standardizing the British game with that of the rest of the baseball world, to place our game on at least equal footing with that of others, particularly America. The key differences incorporated into the new ball, manufactured in Philadelphia, is that it is made of horsehide rather than cow’s leather, and that the “seams” holding together the construction have been raised substantially, allowing the pitcher to gain greater advantage in controlling the flight and trajectory of the missile as he hurls it plateward.

To the naked eye, it was quite easy to see the effect. A casual observer could see the pitched baseball twist and turn in contortions never before seen on these shores, and it made for a more interesting battle between pitcher and batsman. The pitcher no longer need serve the ball “on a silver platter” and implore the opponent to freely hit the ball where he likes as hard as he likes; the batsman must now battle the pitcher’s delivery in a way he had not known to do before. To the keen baseball loyalist, this creates a far more interesting confrontation, akin to a game of chess, pitting the pitcher and batsman in a game of wits as the former attempts to make a fool out of the latter, and the latter attempts to win the battle despite the former’s ability to so exactly control the delivery. When all comes to all, it creates interesting tension between the two sides, and imbues each pitch made with far more import.

In retrospect, the effect on attack and pitching records occurred as predicted. A complete analysis of the record shows that in the First Division, batting average for all players combined went from .286 last season to .262 this; home runs decreased from 509 to 357; strike outs increased from 5,014 to 7,045; and runs per game went from nearly five to exactly four per team. The story is very much the same in the Second Division: batting average dropped from .278 to .260; home runs from 510 to 354; strike outs increased from 4,840 to 6,910; and runs per game are down to less than four, 3.94 to be exact.

Some of the best baseballers in the game did not seem to be as adversely affected by the change as were the lesser of their peers. For example, Pat Hodgson of Port Vale hit sixteen home runs with the Spalding ball this year, whilst division leader Harrison Whittington of Stoke could manage only twelve with the Dukes ball last. Robert Arscott was able to bat .414 in 1908, and although less than last year’s .433, is not as dramatic a decrease as might have been expected. The batting average leader in the lower level, Sheffield Wednesday’s Frank Hodder, batted .355 this year, having dropped only seven points from his .362 in 1907. And despite the dramatic increase in strike outs, no new strike out records for either batsmen or pitchers were set.

Individual examples set aside, it is clear that the total effect of the Spalding baseball was a dramatic one, or a drastic one depending on your point of view, and in our opinion this has made the game better, not worse, and the gate reflects that this is the baseball public’s point of view as well, as each division drew well over four million paying customers each for the first season in the League’s history.