Ray Chapman died in 1920, hit
in the head by the pitch of a slick baseball. That was enough to get the powers
that run America’s Pastime to take action.
A baseball should not be a weapon that kills people. ‘Let’s find a
solution’, everyone who mattered agreed.
No Major League Baseball player
had ever died from getting hit by a baseball before. No one has since
either. When baseballs are manufactured
they look nice and clean, but they are very slick. Pitchers can easily lose
their grip, and that is what can turn a baseball into a weapon. The baseball
authorities knew they could do better. They knew that they must find a
solution.
They tried rubbing the new slick baseballs with all kinds of materials. Nothing worked the way they wanted it to until they discovered ‘miracle mud’ in the 1930’s. “Miracle mud’ comes from a one mile stretch of one river in the United States, a secret location, so secret that not even baseball’s owners know it. But, since the 1950’s, it’s been the rule that this mud must be rubbed on every baseball for every MLB game, some 240,000 baseballs a season.
Pretty amazing, don’t you
think. Someone dies. The governing
authorities decide they need to do something about it. Not just lament Ray Chapman’s death; find a
way to prevent the next one. Then, with the will to change in place, the genius of the American mind works,
experiments, until a solution is found. Then, that solution is written into the
baseball rules. Everyone must follow the rules, because mud on baseballs saves
lives.
The American mind, the
American spirit. Creatively making life safer.
When there is a will, we find
a way.
Hmmm.
(Source and credit: Sports
Illustrated, July 29-Aug. 5, Stuck in the Mud, by Emma Baccelieri)
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