That Bat!

The dirty end of the stick

Trouble was, George Brett likes the feel of callused skin against unpolished timber, so the T-85s he orders by the cord from the Hillerich & Bradsby Co. in Kentucky are unstained, pure white bolts of mountain ash, legendary Louisville Sluggers. In order to keep his grip without gloves, the Kansas City third baseman takes tar and slathers every bat like a small town honoring a scoundrel. About the middle of the club, maybe a little higher up than the label, Brett cultivates a sticky reserve for when his palms get especially clammy, like when Goose Gossage is pitching.

The T in T-85, incidentally, stands for Throneberry, the first baffling circumstance in last week's bizarre comeback story of a baseball bat that hit the losing home run. Wood is not a casual concern to ballplayers. Why a .353 hitter like Brett would lumber along with a Marvelous Marv Throneberry model (lifetime .237) is the sort of paradox that, scientists say, has trees talking to themselves. With two men out and one runner on base in the top of the ninth inning, the New York Yankees leading the Royals, 4-3, Brett took up his gooey cudgel and went out to meet Gossage.

There are rules regarding the personal customizing of bats, as Yankee Third Baseman Graig Nettles well knows. Several seasons ago, the barrel of Nettles' bat went off embarrassingly and a spray of little rubber balls shot forth. Nettles was the first man ever to bounce out to the third baseman, the shortstop and the second baseman all at once. Recently in Kansas City, he noticed Brett's bat was duty and mentioned it to Coach Don Zimmer.

Cork, resin, paraffin and tenpenny nails are abominations designed to make the ball fly a greater distance, but the pine-tar section of Rule 1.10 ("not more than 18 in. from the end") was included merely to keep the ball clean, actually in consideration to the hitter. From the second Brett homered to right, and Nettles ran to Zimmer, and Zimmer ran to Manager Billy Martin, and Martin ran to the umpires, and the New York Times ran it on Page One, no one argued that Brett had taken or received any unfair advantage. And that was the crux of American League President Lee MacPhail's ruling four days after Brett was called out and the game was declared over: that the home run stands, and the last four outs must be finished on an off day if practical or after the season if necessary.

In the 9 1/2 years of MacPhail's watch, which concludes this year, he has put no one in mind of either Solomon or Kenesaw Mountain Landis. But the ringing phrases in MacPhail's two-page reversal included: "The spirit of the rules" and "It is the strong conviction of the league that games should be won and lost on the playing field." The umpires' call was "technically defensible"; MacPhail did not blame them. With a flourish, he even commended "Manager Martin and his staff for their alertness." But all future complaints about pine tar will have to be lodged before the fact. Brett's cherished bat, "a seven-grainer," one ring for every year of a tree's troubled life, was returned to him with the heralded news that he had 20 home runs, not 19, and there are still two outs in the top of the ninth. The Royals are leading, 5-4. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.