Don’t get caught looking at the third strike

By Phil Cobb | May 10, 2020 |

SUBMITTED PHOTO
Marvin Bell

Having umpired every level of baseball other than professional baseball for 46 years (1962-2008), including a dozen seasons in the collegiate Big 10 and Big 8 conferences, I learned that the strike zone often was in the eye of the beholder, and the beholders were batters, coaches, fans, and even home plate umpires, me included.

All told, I umpired somewhere around 3,000 games, probably more than that, with approximately half of that total behind the plate. One season my partner and I worked 130-some games, high school, American Legion, town team adult league games, and collegiate games. … seven days a week during the summers, and in the spring starting in early April, or even in late March, depending on the weather and lasting until mid-October in the fall, and on weekends when school was in session.

The two questions that I used to get the most were, “What’s the hardest thing to call and what is the strike zone supposed to be?”

My first answer was, “The hardest thing to call is the strike zone, not the bang-bang plays on the infield.”

The second answer was that the strike zone is a bit below the chest and on down to the knees. If the count is two strikes, then the batter had best swing and not try to do the umpiring.

The strike zone has changed from the 1950s when I started playing baseball. In those days, as many players my age (76) will recall, the strike zone was generally known to be “From the shoulders to the knees.”

Then sometime into my umpiring career and depending on what level of baseball my partner and I were working, the strike zone ranged from the chest (instead of the shoulders) to either the top, middle, or bottom of the knees. Then a few years later, the strike zone changed again (see below).

Confusing? Yes, just as it is in today’s baseball. That is why major league baseball soon will use the technology that we see in the televised batter’s box.

Regardless, here is the definition of the major league modern strike zone:

The Major League Official Rules defines the top of the strike zone at the midpoint between the top of the batter’s shoulders and the top of the uniform pants. The bottom of the strike zone is at the hollow beneath thekneecap, both determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at the pitched ball. The right and left boundaries of the strike zone correspond to the edges of home plate. A pitch that touches the outer boundary of the zone is as much a strike as a pitch that is thrown right down the center. A pitch at which the batter does not swing and which does not pass through the strike zone is called a ball (short for “no ball”). The active tally of strikes and balls during a player’s turn batting is called the count.

The strike zone is a volume of space delimited by vertical planes extending up from the pentagonal boundaries of the home plate and limited at the top and bottom by upper and lower horizontal planes passing through the horizontal lines of the definition above. This volume thus takes the form of a vertical right pentagonal prism located above home plate. A pitch passing outside the front of the defined volume of the strike zone but curving so as to enter this volume farther back (without being hit) is described as a “back-door strike”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_zone)

Now, let’s say that Cal Eldred or Mike Boddicker, both from east central Iowa, were pitching, either for their respective high schools or later for the University of Iowa and then later again in the major leagues. These two guys were outstanding pitchers but with a different assortment of their number-one pitches.

Eldred, now the pitching coach of the Royals, stood 6-foot-4 and weighed in at a man’s size, and threw “the heater, “b-bees,” or “gas,” and the pitch often moved. Was the pitch one-baseball’s width wide of the plate, or was it just barely on the corner of home plate (Remember now, 95 miles per hour and moving)?

Boddicker threw what later for the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series was called a “Slurve,” a pitch that was a combination of a curveball and a slider. He had that same pitch in high school and could supplement it with a fastball on the corner or perhaps just one-baseball’s width off the corner of home plate.

The strike zone obviously was lowered in the mid-1980s because the high point of the zone became the belly-button, not just above the belly-button. Major League players continue to whine and complain about strikes being called above the belly-button. They appear to want the ball to be set up on a batting tee.

So, the moral of this story is that I recall numerous Maryville coaches in Little League, Pony League, American Legion ball, and Ban Johnson ball repeatedly telling us, “If you have two strikes on you, and the pitch is close, swing the bat.”