OCR Text |
Show BALK RULE NOT ENFORCED. Umpires Altogether Too Easy With the Pitchers. Before the championship seasons of the major leagues opened It was generally announced that Instructions had been given American league umpires to enforce the balk rule against pitchers In that organization or-ganization with the same severlt shown In the National last year During the preliminary training trips of tho clubs of these two organisations, great attention was paid the pitchers by their managers to brenk them of all false motions that Incur the penS-lt by tho umpire. Since th" 04 ason has Opened the umpires um-pires have taken practically no notico of Infractions of the balk rule. Scarcely a game Is played 'bat protests are not made hy one or the other captain against motions of a twlrler calculated to deceive the base runner. Nearly 1"0 games have h"eti placed In the American h agiio since the opening, April U nnd only vrry few-balks few-balks have been called by the officials. Because umpires har e no! penalised tho pitchers does not signify they have not violated tho balk rule, according to the Interpretation of the National league and tho Instructions given by President Johnson to his staff of arbitrators, according ac-cording to reports There Is hardly a pitcher In the league who Is not using practically all of the old motions he used in former days for the purpose of holding n base runner close to the bag or of nipping nip-ping him off It should he not be Wide awake at all moments. Pitchers Getting Away With Balk. Thev are all getting away with the old-lime old-lime half-balk motion and nothing Is said by the officiating umpires, The pitchers get In position to deliver tho ball to tho bat and then remove their hand or shrug their shoulders or lift their nrms from the ball almost any of the former methods meth-ods of deceh in,- Reasons for the Instructions to Amert-can Amert-can league umpires to enforce the balk rule have been sought, for the league we,,l along srnool hlv . nonuh 1 ' without it. even though the Nationals did do so 'i he theoi j ad1 am ed by one ba ball manager Is as follows. "Y hen the national commission Rottlrd on the interleague series between the American and National, the confusion Incident In-cident t,. l wo kinds of pitching was dls- cussed. For the National leaguers to be bound down all ve.n lo a strict Interpretation Interpre-tation of the balk rule while tho Americans Ameri-cans did anything they wanted to. was not fair to the National pitchers when playing the Americans lii the post-season series, for the National box men would be used to these restrictions and not prepared pre-pared to go through all kinds of gyrations gyra-tions to hold the runners close to the base. Bewlde that. It would be tough on the National's bare runners, who would be up in the air most of the time over tho motions allowed the American e;tguers. It tended to give an unfair advantage to the American players when playing on tho hitters grounds Consequently, when the rules were framed It was decided both leagues should enforce them exactly alike, hence orders for the enforcement of the balk rule In the American le igue |