Baseball Shorts: Emery Ball

In today’s episode of “Baseball Shorts” we pay attention to an alternative term of doctored balls or scuffed balls.

Emery is a kind of sandpaper-like tool used to smoothen wood. In the early 20th century, it was also used by pitchers to roughen up balls.

When such a ball is pitched, the scuffed side will be more resistant to the force of air, causing it to move erratically when it nears the plate.

This kind of pitch was “invented” by Russ Ford in 1908 and introduced in the Bigs in 1910. In 1915, it was the first pitch to be banned.

Ford hid a piece of sandpaper/emery in his glove to rough up one side of the hide of the ball. Ford stated in an interview with the Sporting News in 1935: “I took the emery paper from the outside of my glove and sewed it on the web between the thumb and fourth finger. Later I placed a disc of emery paper, on inch in diameter on a ring which I wore and cut out the center of my pitching glove. This secret was discovered in 1914 and other pitchers started to throw this pitch, but most were not as successful as Ford.

Remarkable fact: Even though scuffing a ball is a form of cheating, Russ Ford still was elected into the Canadian Hall of Fame in 1987, as he was born in Manitoba.