The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-03-13
No Changes Will
 Be Made IIl Rule
 Governing Ball
Playing Code for Baseball Will Be the Same This Year As
 In Previous Season-Joint Rule Committee So Decides After New York Meeting

No doubt all the hurlers in the As sociation addicted to the spitball have been spending the winter in devising ways and means of moistening the ball in some other way than the fla miliar one. And attempts by the umpires to penalize new and occult methods of pitching the splitter" will only tend to endless disputes, wrangles, and delays, just as was the cause with Eddie Cicotte's ''shine ball, camoufiage all last season. Be sides. I have not read of any penalty for delivering even the old fashioned spitball in the American Association, although one may have been provided Without a penalty no rule can be en- forced in baseball and there is noth- ing in the rules at present penalizing the splitter
 President Johnson of the American League was wise in his decision not to attempt to rule out the spitball, for two reasons. First, it is dying nat ural death anyway, because fewer and fewer pitchers are using it each year. Secondly, its actual abolition is impossible without a heluva lot of trouble for the umpires. All they can accomplish anyway is to prevent the appearance of using the spitball. That might help some, at that, because it would eliminate some of the time wasted by the pitchers during game.
 The great majority of supposed spitball pitchers do a great deal of bluffing while on the slab. They go A.. r%o f,ocr h ball every time they deliver it, but in reality they pitch a spitball only occasionally, just to demonstrate that 1 they can. The object of the bluff is to keep the batter guessing. Elimi- nation of one guess would help the l batsman, but the wise pitcher, as have already said, will find another way to deliver an occasional spitbal l if compelled to do so. Consequently the batsman would have to do the same amount of guessing in the end
 Suggestions to Help Batting
 Some other way must be found tc increase the batting. Presiden Haughton of the Braves who has ex perienced considerable diversity since he sat in at the major league game i IldS IQdQe SSNSTdl SuSSSSIIOu lOE Adu dicapping the pitcher. His most re cent one is awarding a base on ball! | for three bad balls instead of foul That surely would compel the hurlel l to groove the ball oftener and would help the batsman a lot. But it would have the disadvantage of increasing the quantity of bases on balls, anC goodness knows the fans hate thos the worst way now.
 It would be better to increase tn batsmen's chances of making saf hit, for those clean hits are what de light the fans most. By allowing the batsman four strikes instead o three the hitting could be increased without entailing any more free tic kets to first than heretofore. Il that case it would be necessary t call a strike on a batsman for ever foul he made until he had thre strikes, instead of up to the secon strike as at present.
 Eliminating the out on foul fl which is caught would also help tn
 batting without prolonging the gam as much as multiplying the bases O
 balls would tend to do. But apparent ly it will require another season of fl
 nancial diversity to induce the clu owners to consent to any importan change in the game.