This Change of Pace Hough Doesn’t Need

It was one of the great innings of baseball history. It had never been seen anywhere else. Never in the big leagues, the minors, the sandlots. They don’t call balks in the sandlots.

They called lots of them in that game at Dunedin, Fla., two weeks ago, 12 in all.

To give you an idea how big a story that is, there were only 13 balks called in the whole season of 1956 in the National League. There were only 18 called in the American League in 1941.

One pitcher committed nine balks in four innings at Dunedin. To put that in perspective, that ties the record for the most balks by one pitcher in a season in the history of the American League. And the pitcher who holds that record is the same one who threw the nine at Dunedin.

He also--and here comes the good part--balked seven times, that’s s-e-v-e-n, in one inning! He not only balked in two runs, he balked each of them from first base to second to third to home. It was a Mardi Gras of balks.

They don’t have exploding scoreboards for balks but if they did, Charlie Hough would light up the sky.

Nobody can balk like Charlie Hough. He is the Babe Ruth of balkers. Baserunners should erect a statue to Charlie Hough.

Babe Ruth revived the art of the home run, Maury Wills revived the art of the stolen base but Charlie Hough gave the world the multiple balk. Two balks in one inning is bearing down. Seven is awesome.

It’s not that Charlie can’t help himself. Charlie needs the balk. It’s part of his arsenal. It’s his third pitch.

Charlie, you see, is a knuckleball pitcher. There are only two of them left in the major leagues. They’re as endangered as the white Siberian tiger.

You have to understand, a knuckleball goes to the plate like a hound dog through a grove of hydrants. It dips, rises, turns, reverses, veers and even appears to stop periodically on the way to the plate. Junk mail gets there faster.

It crosses the plate in its own good time and its own good way. It doesn’t really cross the plate, it just kind of crash lands. As ump Ron Luciano once said, “You can’t hit it, catch it, or call it.”

But, you can steal on it. You don’t need a radar gun to clock a knuckleball. An egg-timer will do.

No one knows this better than Charlie. Charlie points out that he’s not talking about baserunners like Tim Raines, Willie Wilson, Rickey Henderson, Vince Coleman or Willie McGee. They are going to steal on any pitch and any pitcher. They’ll steal on Nolan Ryan’s fastball.

What Charlie’s talking about is that mediocre runners can steal on his knuckleball. A guy carrying a loaded safe could go in standing up with the detours Charlie’s dancer takes to the plate.

So, Charlie has to do everything he can, short of bringing a rope to tie up the runner at first, to make him run the full 90 feet.

With this in mind, Charlie has had to perfect this little balk move, one that lets him get rid of the ball quickly on the mound and start it on its slow waltz to the plate before the baserunner is aware it’s been released.

No one did this any better than Charlie. Charlie’s weapons system worked very nicely for him. He’s won 149 major league ball games with a fastball you could catch in your teeth and a knuckleball that has cobwebs by the time it gets to the plate.

Charlie is the Texas Rangers’ winningest pitcher in the franchise’s history. Only Jack Morris of Detroit and Fernando Valenzuela top him in wins over the last six seasons. He was fourth in the league in wins, fourth in strikeouts and sixth in complete games last year.

Charlie is 40, but knuckleballers can pitch forever. Arm strain is non-existent. But is Charlie about to be undone by runaway morality--the umpires’ league-mandated crackdown on baseball’s white-collar crime, the balk?

The balk law has been on the books since Abner Doubleday. Like all baseball rules, it leaves a lot to interpretation.

The bad news for Charlie is, the umps have been ordered to enforce it to the letter of the law and beyond. The critical phrasing for Charlie is that a pitcher must come to a stop in his motion between set position and delivery.

Pitchers, particularly knuckleballers and off-speed junkers, have been getting away with ignoring this injunction for almost a century. For Charlie, any delay in getting rid of the ball is fatal. If he comes to a protracted stop, the runner may not only steal second on the pitch, but third and home as well.

It’s easily seen that the rule has never been enforced with vigor. Until the last couple of years, the most balks called in the American League were 60 in 1976. Last season, there were 137. In the National League, where there were only 13 called in 1956, 219 were called last year.

“I know what they’re trying to do,” says Charlie Hough. “They’re trying to bring back offense, as usual. They’re trying to open up the game, provide more scoring. As usual, (pitchers) are the ones asked to bite the bullet.

“They say the balk rule is suddenly being enforced to the letter because it deceives the runner.

“But deception is part of the game! You deceive the runner when you trap the ball and pretend you caught it. Heck, you deceive the umpire, the fans, the whole game. You deceive when you decoy a runner into thinking you have a play. You deceive with the hidden-ball trick.

“Look! You deceive when you throw the curveball, don’t you? Aren’t you trying to make the batter think you’re throwing him a nice straight fastball? The curve is a deception, the knuckler is a deception, the slider is a deception. So, sometimes, is the fastball. A batter is sure deceived when I throw mine!”

So, Charlie wants to know, what’s the big deal in deceiving a little old baserunner? Particularly if it’s career death if you don’t?

Pitchers need a lawyer. Knuckleball pitchers like Charlie need a call from the governor.