(Updated March 5, 2023)
After getting caught breaking the rules in a game at St. Louis, Don Sutton and the Dodgers denied, covered up and threatened to sue. The National League caved.
On July 14, 1978, Sutton, the Dodgers’ ace, was ejected by umpire Doug Harvey for pitching a defaced baseball against the Cardinals.
The punishment for such a violation included a 10-day suspension, but National League president Chub Feeney opted not to take that disciplinary action after getting a visit from Sutton’s lawyer.
Under suspicion
A right-hander, Sutton was a gifted pitcher who consistently achieved double-digit season win totals.
He also had a reputation for doctoring the ball. The Cardinals accused him of throwing a spitball the first time they faced him his rookie season. Ten years later, the Cardinals’ Lou Brock implied Sutton used Vaseline to make his pitches dart and dip. Reds manager Sparky Anderson complained Sutton routinely broke the rules by scuffing the ball.
Scuffing “makes the ball unpredictable,” Cardinals catcher Ted Simmons told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “It’s like a dry spitball.”
On June 8, 1977, in a game versus the Cubs, Sutton was ejected for the first time. Bill Buckner, an ex-Dodger, was batting against Sutton when he asked plate umpire Bruce Froemming to inspect the ball. Cubs manager Herman Franks joined in, requesting a search of Sutton. Umpires obliged, but found nothing.
Before delivering his next pitch, Sutton knelt on the mound and belligerently rubbed the ball in the dirt, the Los Angeles Times reported. Dick Stello, umpiring at third, asked for the ball. Sutton fired it low and hard, and the ball skimmed past Stello and into left field.
Froemming started out to the mound to confront Sutton. “His face was red and his veins were throbbing,” Sutton told the Los Angeles Times. “I called him a fat, gutless, little jackass.”
Sutton was ejected. Boxscore
Finding evidence
A year later, Sutton, 33, was seeking his 200th career win in a Friday night start for the Dodgers at Busch Memorial Stadium. The Cardinals had the worst record (35-53) in the league and the Dodgers were defending champions.
Early in the game, either in the second or third, Jerry Crawford, umpiring at first, looked at the ball after the Cardinals had made the last out of the inning. Crawford showed it to crew chief Doug Harvey and said, “Doug, this ball has been defaced,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Harvey told Crawford to hold onto the ball.
In the sixth, after Keith Hernandez lined out to center fielder Bill North to end the inning, North rolled the ball toward the infield. Harvey, umpiring at second, picked up the ball and saw it was defaced.
According to Harvey, “the ball had an identical type of scuff mark” as the one Crawford showed him a few innings earlier, the Los Angeles Times noted.
Harvey went to Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda and said, “Someone is fooling with the baseball.”
“I told him if the pitcher pitched another defaced ball I would eject him,” Harvey recalled to The Sporting News.
You’re out
In the seventh, the Cardinals’ Mike Tyson flied out to right fielder Rick Monday for the third out of the inning. As the Dodgers left the field, Harvey called for the ball. He saw the same scuff mark in a similar spot as the other two balls.
There was, Harvey told the Los Angeles Times, “a roughness on the ball almost in exactly the same spot on all three. It was enough of a scuff to alter the flight of the ball.”
Harvey ordered the Dodgers to return to the field and ejected Sutton. He declared Sutton’s last pitch to Tyson a ball and told Tyson to get back into the batter’s box.
Lance Rautzhan relieved Sutton and got Tyson to again fly out to Monday in right.
The Cardinals, ahead, 2-1, when Sutton was tossed, scored twice against rookie Bob Welch in the eighth and won, 4-1, behind Pete Vuckovich’s three-hitter. Boxscore
Reasonable doubt?
In the clubhouse, Sutton told the Post-Dispatch, “I’m suing Harvey, the National League and whoever runs the umpiring for depriving me of my rights to earn a living as a pitcher.”
The Dodgers claimed the scuff marks on the balls were caused by the AstroTurf.
“It’s like bouncing a leather basketball on asphalt,” Rick Monday told the Los Angeles Times. “That’s what happens to a baseball on AstroTurf.”
Lasorda said Sutton “did absolutely nothing to the ball.”
Technically, Lasorda may have been correct. Post-Dispatch columnist Bob Broeg reported a Cardinals player suggested a Dodgers infielder concealed in his glove a piece of sandpaper with which to scuff the baseball for Sutton.
Harvey told the Post-Dispatch, “I want to make it clear I’m not saying Sutton was doing it. I’m just saying it was Sutton who was pitching a defaced baseball.”
The Post-Dispatch noted that because all three balls were defaced in the same area and in the same manner “it hardly could be a matter of coincidence.”
“I was three-fourths sure Sutton was doing it,” Harvey told The Sporting News.
Backing down
Sutton was represented by Ed Hookstratten, an attorney whose celebrity client list ranged from entertainers Elvis Presley and Joey Bishop to broadcasters Tom Brokaw and Vin Scully. Hookstratten was the husband of actress Patricia Crowley, who starred in the TV series “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies.”
Hookstratten met Feeney at the National League office in New York and presented the artificial turf theory, The Sporting News reported.
“They didn’t have a case,” Hookstratten said. “Those artificial fields are so tough on the ball that everyone is throwing doctored pitches.”
Hookstratten phoned Sutton and said, “I met with Mr. Feeney. You’re not suspended. Keep your mouth shut and I’ll talk to you later.”
On July 17, three days after Sutton was ejected, Feeney ruled there was insufficient evidence for a suspension. “The action taken by the umpires was proper … but no further disciplinary action appears appropriate at this time,” Feeney said.
In his Post-Dispatch column, Broeg wrote, “Feeney fumbled.”
The beat goes on
The next night, July 18, Sutton started against the Pirates at Pittsburgh. He wore a T-shirt with the words, “Not Guilty,” under his uniform jersey. Sutton pitched a six-hitter and got the win, No. 200 for his career. Boxscore
Sutton joined Don Drysdale as the only pitchers with 200 wins as Dodgers. “When you talk about him, you’re talking about durability, consistency and dependability,” Sutton said. “I want to be thought of in that light.”
(In the book “The Head Game,” Drysdale told writer Roger Kahn, “I threw a good spitball. When I wet the ball and kept my fingers on the smooth part, the bottom would drop out of the pitch when it reached the plate. A pretty good fastball that falls off the table.”)
A month later, Sutton again made headlines when, in an interview with the Washington Post, he said Reggie Smith, not Steve Garvey, was the Dodgers’ best player. When Garvey confronted Sutton about it in the clubhouse before a game against the Mets, they argued and got into a fight.
The rough-and-tumble Dodgers went on to win the 1978 National League pennant.
Sutton ranks as the Dodgers’ franchise leader in career wins, strikeouts, shutouts and innings pitched.
Sutton and Harvey both were elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Ol’ Black and Decker.
I did get a chuckle out of Sutton hiding obscene notes in his uniform that the umpires would find when they searched him.
One of my college roommates used to secretly write obscenities on random blank pages in my notebooks and I would struggle not to laugh when I was taking notes in math class.
He’s probably the vice-president of some Fortune 500 company now, the bastard.
I am sincerely impressed you took math class in college. I was able to graduate in 4 years only because I managed to avoid taking any math.
Don Sutton was just keeping with a Dodgers tradition. Preacher Roe, Tommy John, Rick Honeycutt, Orel Hershiser and Jay Howell have always been suspected of doctoring the baseball. I agree with the theory that sometimes it’s the catcher or one of the infielders who actually is doing the dirty work. Pretty interesting that not too long after this the umpires went on strike.
Don Drysdale, too.
Glad you mentioned Preacher Roe, who started his career with the Cardinals. Roe admitted to throwing a spitball. After he retired, Roe penned an article for Sports Illustrated that was titled, “The Outlawed Spitball Was My Money Pitch.” Roe revealed Beech-Nut chewing gum gave him the best amount of saliva to load the ball.
umpires today can’t even call balls and strikes correctly. Bad calls are the norm now.
It wouldn’t surprise me if an electronic system for calling balls and strikes isn’t far off: https://retrosimba.com/2020/07/29/creative-cardinal-charlie-james-designed-electronic-ump/
How do we explain the fact that Preacher Roe’s 1955 Sports Illustrated story, “The outlawed Spitball Was My Money Pitch” is not available at SI Vault? Do you think Ed Hookstratten got to them too?
Roger Kahn, in his book, “The Era,” said Roe was paid $2,000 by Sports Illustrated to reveal how he loaded the ball. Kahn said the article was factual but Roe regretted it and “made certain sounds of recantation.”
In 1967, Sports Illustrated did a substantial piece on the spitball and other doctored pitches. It cites some of the Preacher Roe article, including the revelation from Roe that olive oil worked best for his spitball. Also in that 1967 piece, Gene Mauch said Don Drysdale’s spitter was the best because it was thrown the hardest.
Here is a link the 1967 SI story: https://vault.si.com/vault/1967/07/31/the-infamous-spitter