Throwing at Batters: When Dusters Were Part of the Game

“Perhaps the greatest of them all” Sandy Koufax

‘Home Plate Belongs to Me’

Pitchers throwing at batters, for whatever reason, was long considered part of the game. The attitude among pitchers was: “Home plate belongs to me.”

If a batter dug in with his spikes to get a firmer stance, some pitches would yell, “Dig a little deeper and I’ll bury you in it.”

And if a batter showboated and made a pitcher angry, he or the next batter would pay for it. Everybody knew it and accepted it.

But times have changed.

2023 ALCS

In Game 5 of the 2023 ALCS in Houston, when Texas slugger Adolis Garcia clouted a long home run and stood near home plate admiring it before finally beginning to trot around the bases, Rangers pitcher Bryan Abreu had just cause to be angry, not because he’d just given up a home run, but because of Garcia’s showboating. 

The next time Garcia came up to bat, Abreu drilled him on the shoulder with an up-and-in fastball, to which Garcia took exception and started jawing at the Astros’ catcher, inspiring players from dugouts and bullpens to join in the non-violent confrontation.

The umpires convened and decided to eject the pitcher for intentionally throwing at Garcia and, when Astros manager Dusty Baker, objected, to excuse him for the rest of the game, too.

Whether Abreu had intentionally thrown at Garcia is debatable; what is not debatable is how the game has changed since the days when pitching inside to brush back or intimidate or, yes, send a batter sprawling in the dirt was a common and accepted part of the game.

The Brushback Pitch

Some schools of thought hold that baseball is at least 90 percent mental. The idea of the brushback pitch was to get into the hitter’s mind, to intimidate, to make him more tentative at the plate, hesitant to go after an outside pitch, lest an inside fastball came at him.

That’s why Brooklyn Dodgers’ manager Leo Durocher would stand in the dugout and holler to his pitcher, “Stick it in his ear!” loud enough for the batter to hear it. He wasn’t ordering his pitcher to throw at the hitter’s head; he was playing games with the hitter’s head.

The use of the brushback pitch reached its peak in the 1920s and ‘30s, especially in the National League, where the competition was most intense. From 1921 to 1938, the Giants, Cubs, Pirates and Cardinals fought for and won all the pennants.

Here’s a look at a few of the most memorable of the brush-back pitchers.

Dizzy Dean

Nobody enjoyed making hitters duck and hit the dirt more than Dizzy Dean. Dean had excellent control; he wasn’t wild.  Tony Cuccinello: “One day Dean threw one right at my face, I stuck my hand up and it hit off my hand and got me in the face. In Cincinnati we had a catcher, Clyde Sukeforth.

He had been in a shooting accident while hunting the year before. Got birdshot in his eye. In spring training one day, Dean took the button right off his cap. You could see he was stunned.

He took the bat and went out to the mound and said to Dean, ‘If you ever do that again, I’m going to hit you right over the head with this bat.’ Dean never threw at him again.”

New York Giants third baseman Travis Jackson believed that much of Dean’s throwing at hitters was caused by his Cardinals’ teammates egging him on to do it. But Dean never threw at pitchers or former teammates who’d been traded.

One day Dean was enjoying sending one Giants batter after another in the dirt. When Dean went up to bat, Giants catcher Gus Mancuso told him, ‘If you throw at another man, we’re going to start with you and we’re going to knock every one of you flat on your ass.”

Diz didn’t throw at anybody else that day.

Van Mungo

National League infielder Tony Cuccinello recalled, “The Cubs were known for throwing at batters. Lon Warneke and Pat Malone and Tex Carleton, I remember Casey Stengel, our manager, saying, ‘’Who do I have who can go out there and knock somebody on his fanny?’ And the guy we had was Van Lingle Mungo.” 

Giants shortstop Dick Bartell summed it up: “Van Mungo had it in for me, I knew he’d be making me hit the dirt.

The only way to retaliate was, the next time up, I’d bunt toward first base to make Mungo come over to cover first and run into him and knock him down.

But he was wise enough to get out of the way. And if the guy batting ahead of me hit a home run, I knew I’d be going down on the first pitch I saw. It didn’t make sense; I hadn’t hit the homer.

But that’s the way it was. You’d hear a pitcher say, ‘When he comes up to bat again, I’ll get him.’”

It was considered unwise for batters who were brushed back or sent sprawling at the plate to charge the mound in anger. For one thing, pitchers were usually bigger than other players. And they were the ones with the ball and long memories.

It also caused players from both teams to rush out of the dugouts and bullpens, though usually no blows were thrown before the umpires broke it up. And the charging player was more likely to be ejected by the umpire than the pitcher.

But sometimes tempers erupted. 

On July 17, 1956, in Milwaukee, Giants hot-headed pitcher Ruben Gomez hit the Milwaukee Braves’ hot-tempered first baseman Joe Adcock on the wrist. The 6-fot-4 Adcock hollered something at Gomez as he trotted toward first base.

The hot-headed Gomez threw a ball at Adcock, hitting him in the thigh. Adcock charged at Gomez, who fled into the Giants’ dugout, pursued by Adcock as players from both teams swarmed onto the field. 

Years later Adcock described to me what happened next as he remembered it:

“I jumped in the dugout behind him and then it got tough. He came out of the clubhouse with an ice pick in one hand and a butcher knife in the other. He’s standing no farther than from me to you.

“I’ll kill you.” But there’s plainclothes detectives all over that ballpark and there’s a little fellow in a blue suit, shirt and tie, and he reached in between me and Gomez and pulled out a snub-nosed .38 pistol and pushed it right in Gomez’s stomach right there in the dugout.”

Both players were ejected and fined.

The name of the game was intimidation. And it didn’t end after the 1930s. 

Nolan Ryan

Nolan Ryan didn’t like fielding bunts. The first time he’d face a rookie known for his speed, Ryan would take a few steps toward home plate and holler, ‘Don’t even think about bunting.’

His term for brushing back a hitter was “pinning a bow tie” on him.

Earl Wynn

Early Wynn had a reputation: “He’d throw at his own mother, and if he hit her, he’d try to pick her off first.”

Now Wynn may have been the kindest, most loving son a mother ever had, but he knew the reputation worked in his favor and did nothing to counter it. And won 300 games in the process.

Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax

Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Johnny Roseboro directed the “chin music” chorus of Drysdale and Koufax using their fastball to move hitters back off the plate. “They wouldn’t knock you down,” he said, “but they’d come up under your chin.

With an 0-2 count on a right-handed batter, Drysdale would come sidearm inside with a 96 mph fastball, and when the hitter saw me move my glove inside, his intestinal fortitude will not let him look outside.

So then many a time Drysdale would just throw that ball on the outside corner – strike three. Sometimes I would set up on the outside edge of the plate, knowing the batter would see that and relax a little.

But I’d given the pitcher the sign for an inside fastball and that’s where he’d throw it, knowing I’d be there to catch it. “

Bob Gibson

Bob Gibson was the epitome of the pitchers’ attitude, “Home plate belongs to me.” His glaring, threatening demeanor on the mound warned batters not to get too comfortable, not to be too aggressive at attacking the outer half of the plate. He didn’t hesitate to fire a warning pitch at your ribs or behind your back. 

But brushback pitches did not equate with hit batters; the Ryans and Gibsons and Deans weren’t eager to put men on base. They might average 5 or 6 hit batters a year. And the batters knew to stay loose enough to get out of the way.

Rex Barney

Some fastball pitchers were just plain wild. They didn’t aim to throw at hitters; they just lacked control, which had the same effect. The Dodgers’ Rex Barney was one. In his short career he walked 410 batters in 597 innings.

When Barney started against the Yankees in Game 6 of the 1947 World Series, Yankees outfielder Tommy Henrich recalled, “We were all scared to death at the plate.”

And with good reason: in 4.2 innings, Barney gave up just 2 runs and 3 hits but walked 9.

Johnny Allen

Some pitchers who were nice guys off the field, turned just plain mean on the mound, or at least selectively so. Brooklyn catcher Mickey Owen said of Whitlow Wyatt, “All you had to do was tell Wyatt he was pitching today and he’d turn mad.” 

According to Owen, Johnny Allen was an intelligent pitcher with a mean streak.

If he hated a player for some reason, he’d throw four straight pitches at him, aiming straight for the chest. Infielder Bill Werber was his favorite target.

When Owen asked him why he hated Werber, Allen said, “When I was in an orphanage, there was one person who gave me a rough time. He reminds me of him, and when I see him I remember that so-and-so. I’m getting even with him.”

Ted Lyons

This Hall of Fame White Sox pitcher, among the most popular players in the game, had the same objective but used a different approach.

He threw at a batter’s feet – “make ‘em jump rope” as he put it.