18 U.S. Code § 793
Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information
(a) Whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation, goes upon, enters, flies over, or otherwise obtains information concerning any vessel, aircraft, work of defense, navy yard, naval station, submarine base, fueling station, fort, battery, torpedo station, dockyard, canal, railroad, arsenal, camp, factory, mine, telegraph, telephone, wireless, or signal station, building, office, research laboratory or station or other place connected with the national defense owned or constructed, or in progress of construction by the United States or under the control of the United States, or of any of its officers, departments, or agencies, or within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, or any place in which any vessel, aircraft, arms, munitions, or other materials or instruments for use in time of war are being made, prepared, repaired, stored, or are the subject of research or development, under any contract or agreement with the United States, or any department or agency thereof, or with any person on behalf of the United States, or otherwise on behalf of the United States, or any prohibited place so designated by the President by proclamation in time of war or in case of national emergency in which anything for the use of the Army, Navy, or Air Force is being prepared or constructed or stored, information as to which prohibited place the President has determined would be prejudicial to the national defense; or
(b) Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, and with like intent or reason to believe, copies, takes, makes, or obtains, or attempts to copy, take, make, or obtain, any sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, document, writing, or note of anything connected with the national defense; or
(c) Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, receives or obtains or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain from any person, or from any source whatever, any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note, of anything connected with the national defense, knowing or having reason to believe, at the time he receives or obtains, or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain it, that it has been or will be obtained, taken, made, or disposed of by any person contrary to the provisions of this chapter; or
(d) Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or
(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
(g) If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.
(h)
(1) Any person convicted of a violation of this section shall forfeit to the United States, irrespective of any provision of State law, any property constituting, or derived from, any proceeds the person obtained, directly or indirectly, from any foreign government, or any faction or party or military or naval force within a foreign country, whether recognized or unrecognized by the United States, as the result of such violation. For the purposes of this subsection, the term “State” includes a State of the United States, the District of Columbia, and any commonwealth, territory, or possession of the United States.
(2) The court, in imposing sentence on a defendant for a conviction of a violation of this section, shall order that the defendant forfeit to the United States all property described in paragraph (1) of this subsection.
(3) The provisions of subsections (b), (c), and (e) through (p) of section 413 of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 (21 U.S.C. 853(B), (c), and (e)–(p)) shall apply to—
(A) property subject to forfeiture under this subsection;
(B) any seizure or disposition of such property; and
(C) any administrative or judicial proceeding in relation to such property,
if not inconsistent with this subsection.
(4) Notwithstanding SECTION 524(C) OF TITLE 28, there shall be deposited in the Crime Victims Fund in the Treasury all amounts from the forfeiture of property under this subsection remaining after the payment of expenses for forfeiture and sale authorized by law.
(JUNE 25, 1948, CH. 645, 62 STAT. 736; SEPT. 23, 1950, CH. 1024, title I, § 18, 64 STAT. 1003; PUB. L. 99–399, TITLE XIII, § 1306(A), Aug. 27, 1986, 100 STAT. 898; PUB. L. 103–322, TITLE XXXIII, § 330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 STAT. 2147; PUB. L. 103–359, TITLE VIII, § 804(B)(1), Oct. 14, 1994, 108 STAT. 3440;
CITE AS: 18 USC 793
~
LII / Legal Information Institute
18 U.S. Code § 793 - Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information
Signalgate : Violating National Security In Order to Violate Rights
Dr. Timothy Snyder
Thursday 27 March, 2025
A familiar risk to a rule-based republic, such as our own, is when the government claims that it must violate our rights in the name of national security. In Signalgate, we face a novel challenge: a government that brazenly risks national security in order to preserve its ability to repress its citizens.
We see that traditional problem in the deportations to the Salvadoran gulag. We are told that the government knows who is a terrorist; that we must trust their judgement; and that we must accept their actions. The reasoning, as always, is that there is some kind of exceptional situation -- an "invasion" in this case. If we accept that the government gets to decide what is exceptional, the exception then just becomes the rule. This works psychologically, because we can choose to believe (even though it is usually not true) that we the non-arrested and the non-deported are being made more safe.
But in the Signalgate scandal, we encounter something more chilling: our government is openly compromising our national security, the better to violate our rights. Its position is that it is worth risking the lives of soldiers abroad in order to be able to persecute civilians at home.
Let me explain.
On Saturday 15 March, high officials of Musk-Trump conducted a group chat on the messenger app Signal about a bombing of Yemen, including a reporter. Jeff Goldberg, placed in one of the oddest situations in journalistic history, replied on March 24th with a restrained factual account of what happened on the chat before he removed himself. The White House and its allies confirmed that all of this happened, but denied that it was of any significance. With this new scandal, we have tipped over into something different: compromising national security in order to preserve a tool which is used chiefly to violate the rights of Americans.
To see what is novel and what is threatening, let us pause for a moment on the traditional gambit of claiming that we must sacrifice one good thing (freedom) to get another good thing (safety). Musk-Trump is invoking "national security" as a reason why it need not share the facts about its deportation actions with judges, and more broadly as an argument as to why it can deport anyone at any time without due process or indeed any justification at all. The claim here is the old-fashioned one: we must trade rights for security. And the outcome is also the traditional one: if we buy this argument, we lose both. If anyone can be deported at any time for no reason, then we are obviously not only less free but also less secure, as individuals and as a nation.
In a constitutional republic, such as our own, freedom and security alike are grounded in the rule of law. In a rule-of-law state, we can count on the government not apprehending us and deporting us without due process of law and without providing some justification. This practical dignity of our bodies is called habeas corpus, which means that authorities must provide a justification to a court for taking control of your physical body. Logically and historically this is at the foundation of our entire tradition of rights. The individual body comes first; the government must have a good legal reason to confine it.
From this logic, as it strengthened from the Magna Carta eight hundred years ago, to the first English writs of habeas corpus four hundred years ago, to the American Constitution, emerges a usefully liberating skepticism about government purposes. Authorities will always find reasons not to take the individual seriously, and, if permitted, will conspire among themselves to confine our bodies and make us unfree. For this very reason, we have a number of laws, such as the Federal Records Act, whose purpose is to make sure that we know what our government is doing. It is not just that we want them to have a reason for seizing our bodies. It is that we want to be able to head off the kind of government that would plot to do such a thing for tyrannical reasons.
This logic of freedom and tyranny is why government officials, such as those on the Signal chat, are required to record their interactions. Michael Waltz, who initiated the conversation, had the Signal messages set to self-delete. This is a violation of the Federal Records Act and other applicable laws, whose underlying purpose is to protect people from a conspiring government. And so Waltz's action is suggestion of a troubling pattern. Signalgate is shocking on its own. But it is perhaps even more troubling when we begin to understand why the people on the chat were using Signal to make and implement policy. They were risking national security by doing so. But this was worth it to them, apparently, because Signal allows them to deny the rights of Americans.
Let's be clear about the national security problem. For most of us, Signal is a safe platform, and I don't mean to discourage its use by private citizens. But it is specifically forbidden for high government officials to make policy on that platform, because it is less secure that the appropriate government devices. It appears that some of the participants in this Signal chat were highly vulnerable to phishing attacks, since their numbers were publicly available. We know that Russia is trying to hack Signal – although if the Russians had that data, they would not need to do any very complicated hacking. It is possible, on Signal, to inadvertently add a participant in a group chat or a conversation without knowing who that person is. On government platforms that cannot happen. And then, on Signal, it is possible to go on and share crucial information about, for example, a planned or ongoing military operation, which is exactly did take place on March 15th.
Whatever one thinks about a given military operation, it is hard to disagree that it is better, at least for the Americans involved (the surviving relatives of dead Yemeni civilians might have other views), if the plans are not broadcast around the world before they are implemented. The use of Signal suggests the use of personal phones, which some of the participants have more or less admitted (Tulsi Gabbard refused to say; Steve Witkoff, trying to head off the charge that he was using his personal phone inside the Kremlin, admitted to having joined the chat on it after leaving Russia). And the use of personal phones opens a whole new set of vulnerabilities, including the rather widespread Israeli app Pegasus.
But here's the point: the authorities knew of these risks to national security, and thought that they were worth taking, and for a reason. I suggest that this reason is that Signal chats provide American authorities with cover to plan the violation of human rights.
It is important to understand that the risk is systemic. We know about this one instance of the use of Signal and about the one leak. But other leaks have almost certainly happened already. We know about this particular occasion because the inadvertently-added individual happened, by a wild chance, to be a highly responsible reporter who wrote about the incident in a highly responsible way. The assumption that Jeffrey Goldberg is the only person who was inadvertently added to a national security group, just because he is the only case we know about, is unsustainable.
So the people on the group chat were breaking the law, and they were breaking their own departments' rules, they were ignoring advisories from their own departments, and they were endangering national security. The information that they were sharing, had it gotten into the hands of anyone who has not a highly-responsible reporter, could have compromised not only that attack in particular, but US methods in general. It could also have served as the basis for blackmailing American officials. Indeed, for all we know, information that has been leaked on previous Signal conversations, or on other platforms on personal phones, could be the basis for blackmailing American officials right now. But the use of Signal and personal phones appears nevertheless to be the norm in Musk-Trump. Indeed, the administration has given no sign that this would change.
From the content of the group chat, it is clear that Signal (and, again, likely on personal phones) is the default way that Musk-Trump high officials communicate with one another. This group chat explicitly referred to another one. There was a protocol at the beginning of this chat, which seemed familiar to everyone. It involved adding people whose Signal numbers were known, as if this were a standard procedure. No one during the chat wrote anything like: "hey, why are we using Signal?" The reason that no one did so, most likely, is that they all do this every day.
Using Signal enables American authorities to violate the rights of Americans. Signal is attractive not because it is secure with respect to foreign adversaries, which it is not, but because it is secure with respect to American citizens and American judges. The autodelete function, which Mike Waltz was using, violates the law. But what is most essential is the purpose of that law: to protect the rights of Americans from their government. The timed deletion function allows American officials to be confident that their communications will never be recorded and that they can therefore conspire without any chance of their actions being known to citizens at the time or at any later point.
Everyone on that group chat, including the Vice-President, the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Advisor, and the Secretary of State, knew that what they were doing was against the rules, the guidance, and the law. But they were doing what they were doing, I would suggest, for a reason: precisely because it allowed them or their colleagues to compromise the rights of Americans.
In other words, it was worth risking the lives of American soldiers abroad in order to have the opportunity the violate the rights of American civilians at home. Making soldiers unsafe is apparently a price worth paying to make the rest of us also unsafe.
If Signal is used for the most sensitive national security discussions, it is reasonable to ask whether it is also used in discussions about sensitive matters of domestic policy – for example in the discussions of deportations to the Salvadoran gulag or in plans for targeting other individuals. If this is correct, then consider this: when the government contemplates deporting you, it will be doing so on an app that allows those discussions to be secret, not from foreign adversaries, but from you and from judges.
And that, it would appear, is why Signal is being used – and will be used.
Judge James Boasberg is presiding over the El Salvador deportation case. He will now also preside over the Signalgate case, in which the chat participants are accused of violating the Federal Records Act. It is a curious juxtaposition, to say the least: in the one case, the government is unpersuasively invoking national security to keep secrets; in the other, it is openly violating national security in order to preserve the capacity to keep secrets. I think the two cases are linked, not only conceptually, but also technologically. They show both kinds of arguments for authoritarian rule, the traditional and the novel. But most likely they both involve the use of Signal. Perhaps the judge will take the opportunity to inquire.
Even as the Musk-Trump people continue to say that we must sacrifice our rights for national security, they are also starting to say that they find it worthwhile to violate national security in order to have the tools that allow them to violate our rights. In Signalgate, we see the shift from the conventional excuse for authoritarian practices to an open embrace of tyranny for its own sake.
Our Tech Broverlords : The False Prophets of the Unfolding Cypher punk Distopia
Greg Fish
Sunday 23 March, 2025
If there’s a word we need to bring back into the common vernacular to describe what we hear most today, it’s “technobabble.” Usually, it’s what writers with no background in science or technology — and no desire to learn anything about either — cram into a character’s dialog to make them sound clever or justify some absurd plot twist. Your dilithium and kyber crystals for warp drives and light sabers. Your naquadah to power the Stargate. And your Hyperloop to revolutionize transportation.
And with the ascent of the Trump 2.0 administration, angry and confused voters have been asking questions about why a random billionaire is allowed to decide how funds approved by Congress are to be distributed, despite the law very clearly saying this is not allowed, and if they do get a response, it’s usually in the form of a stream of weird claims, outright lies, quietly retracted puffery, and condescending technobabble.
For example, according to President Musk’s DOGE, Social Security — which the GOP he purchased at a deep discount this year has been desperate to dismantle since the day it was established — is paying out millions to 150 year olds. Of course, if you ask anyone familiar with the COBOL programming language, that’s just a default date for entries that are no longer active and nothing more.
Same goes for his angry claim that the government doesn’t use relational databases and SQL scripts to manage data in those databases, to the surprise of those who did government contracting or are employed by government agencies. (I personally wrote thousands of lines of SQL scripts to support just one aspect of ACA implementation for a state agency.) This was followed up by one of his foot soldiers claiming that he’s trying to analyze Social Security data using PostgreSQL, which is, yes, the exact kind of database Musk claimed the government doesn’t use.
He then went on to claim he fried his hard drive processing just 60,000 entries, which is beyond bizarre since anything under a few million entries is considered a very easily manageable table, and I’ve processed billions of rows before without frying any drives and computers. Granted, it took me all day and required fairly specialized code, but it really isn’t anything crazy for today’s comp sci professionals.
So, basically, Musk unleashed a bunch of woefully unqualified people to examine very important software, processes, and policies they know little to nothing about, and as they show their whole asses to the entire planet, they puff out their chests and try to tell us that we’re too dumb to understand just how insanely clever they are, and to try and prove it, they unleash a torrent of panicked verbal diarrhea mixed with comp sci jargon and call actual experts who call them out on it various slurs.
You see, Musk and his fellow tech bros, as well as their beloved guru Curtis Yavin are not geniuses with deep thoughts or amazing expertise, writing complex, thoroughly researched essays after decades of research. They can’t even make computer jokes that aren’t utterly befuddling nonsense. They’re professional verbal onanists making billions by dazzling people with cryptic bullshit, or in Yavin’s case, just write stuff that makes tech billionaires happy.
And this extends to the alleged ultimate grand plans of the tech broligarchy: to more or less dismantle the United States and turn it into a loose network of corporate city states ran by executives and their AI models, a plan supposedly conceived by the evil genius of the aforementioned Yavin.
Here’s the thing, however. Yavin’s plan, embraced by Musk and the rest of the Pay Pal Mafia, is not clever, or new, or original. The guy just read Snow Crash, watched Ghost In The Shell, and decided “yes, I want to be a bad guy in a cyberpunk dystopia!” and then wrote it down in a blog he passed off as some grand insight into the future. If all of this stopped on a hack’s derivative blog, it would almost be funny.
But the fact that it didn’t, and men with power to shape government policy think this is a great idea is absolutely terrifying if you know what cyberpunk actually is. In case you don’t, my friends Trace Dominguez and Julian Huguet over at the That’s Absurd, Please Elaborate Podcast podcast came up with a brilliant description of cyberpunk.
It’s having access to technology that allows you perfect recall of every important and cherished memory. But if you miss a monthly payment, then you lose access to said memories, and the only way you can get them back is to pay up.
Yeah, that is indeed dystopian. This is why so many cyberpunk stories focus on the outcasts, criminals, and forgotten who are trying to better their lot until they simply reach and breaking point to try and rebel against the oppressive and abusive system by hijacking some aspect of its technical prowess for themselves. They never really win, and in many cases, their endings are far from happy. But that’s not the point. It’s that to them, rebellion becomes what gives their lives meaning as they rage until the almost certain dying of the light.
It’s a genre of science fiction created by writers who loved the idea of the future and exploring the frontiers of technology, but were also worried about what it could do in the hands of greedy sociopaths, organized crime, or malicious governments. In every story, the takeaway is simple and straightforward: advanced technology and the vast amounts of money and power it brings has serious consequences, especially if it’s in the hands of those with no empathy or morality. Which, well, kinda fits our new Tech Broverlords perfectly, doesn’t it?
And it also shows exactly why categorizing them as “out of control nerds” misses the mark because they’re not nerds. They’re business tycoons cosplaying as nerds who understand the culture, the lingo, the tech, but in reality, they haven’t a fucking clue, doing the political equivalent of running around a Star Wars convention flashing the Vulcan salute, greeting actual, befuddled fans with “may the force be prosper!” and meeting their confused glares with angry rants about how any real fan totally knows how the Kaylons sieged the Death Star on the forest moon of Pandora.
So, that’s where we’ve ended up. Drowning under a tsunami of technobabble from a bunch of businessmen who once took a couple of coding classes when I was still but a wee radioactive toddler, cosplaying as tech geniuses while dragging us into what I can only describe as the Temu version one of the worst case scenarios in sci-fi they love but can’t wrap their sparse smattering of brain cells around, and so they think it totally rules to be the bad guys in a cold, cruel technological dystopia.
But hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you watched Edgerunners and Pyscho Pass, read Altered Carbon, and thought “holy shit, serfdom with terabit wi-fi, total surveillance, and robot parts of questionable providence and efficacy crammed into and attached to me regardless of my consent sounds awesome!” Though, if that is your stance on the subject, I would ask that you consider that the people trying to do that to you are even remotely qualified for the job …
Pitchers and Catchers
Moe Berg
The Atlantic
September, 1941
I.
Baseball men agree with the philosopher that perfection — which means a pennant to them — is attainable only through a proper combination of opposites. A team equally strong in attack and in defense, well-proportioned as a unit, with, of course, those intangibles, morale, enthusiasm, and direction — that is the story of success in baseball. Good fielding and pitching, without hitting, or vice versa, is like Ben Franklin’s half a pair of scissors — ineffectual. Lopsided pennant failures are strewn throughout the record books. Twenty-game winners or .400 hitters do not ensure victory. Ne quid nimis. Ty Cobb, baseball genius, helped win pennants early in his career, but from 1909 through 1926, his last year at Detroit, he and his formidable array of hitters failed — they never found the right combination. Ed Walsh, the great White Sox spitball pitcher, in 1908 won forty or practically half of his club’s games, to this day an individual pitching record, but alone he couldn’t offset his own ‘hitless wonders.’ Walter Johnson the swift, with over 400 victories, waited almost twenty years before his clubmates at Washington helped him to a championship. Every pennant winner must be endowed both at the plate and in the field. Even Babe Ruth’s bat, when it loomed largest, couldn’t obscure the Yankees’ high-calibre pitching and their tight defense in key spots.
With all the importance that hitting has assumed since the Babe and home runs became synonymous, I note that Connie Mack, major-league manager for almost half a century, household name for strategy wherever the game is played, still gives pitching top rating in baseball.
A Walter Johnson, a Lefty Grove, a Bob Feller, cannon-ball pitchers, come along once in a generation. By sheer, blinding speed they overpower the hitter. Johnson shut out the opposition in 113 games, more than the average pitcher wins in his major-league lifetime. Bob Feller continues this speed-ball tradition. We accept these men as pitching geniuses, with the mere explanation that, thanks to their strong arms, their pitches are comparatively untouchable. When Walter Johnson pitched, the hitter looked for a fast ball and got it; he looked — but it didn’t do him much good. Clark Griffith, then manager of the Washington Club, jestingly threatened Walter with a fine any time he threw a curve. ‘Griff’ knew that no variation in the speed king’s type of pitch was necessary. But what of the other pitchers who are not so talented?
Many times a pitcher without apparent stuff wins, whereas his opponent, with what seems to be a great assortment, is knocked out of the box in an early inning. The answer, I believe, lies in the bare statement, ‘Bat meets ball’; any other inference may lead us into the danger of overcomplication. The player himself takes his ability for granted and passes off his success or lack of it with ‘You do or you don’t.’ Call it the law of averages.
Luck, as well as skill, decides a game. The pitcher tries to minimize the element of luck. Between the knees and shoulders of the hitter, over a plate just 17 inches wide, lies the target of the pitcher, who throws from a rectangular rubber slab on a mound 60 feet, 6 inches distant. The pitcher has to throw into the area with enough on the ball to get the hitter out — that is his intention. Control, natural or acquired, is a prerequisite of any successful pitcher: he must have direction, not only to be effective, but to exist.
Because of this enforced concentration of pitches, perhaps the game’s most interesting drama unfolds within the limited space of the ball-and-strike zone. This pitcher toes the mound; action comes with the motion, delivery, and split-second flight of the ball to the catcher. With every move the pitcher is trying to fool the hitter, using his stuff, his skill and wiles, his tricks and cunning, all his art to win.
Well known to ball players is the two-o’clock hitter who breaks down fences in batting practice. There is no pressure; the practice pitcher throws ball after ball with the same motion, the same delivery and speed. If the practice pitcher varies his windup or delivery, the hitters don’t like it — not in batting practice — and they show their dislike by sarcastically conceding victory by a big score to the batting practice pitcher and demanding another. This is an interesting phenomenon. The hitter, in practice, is adjusting himself to clock-like regularity of speed, constant and consistent. He is concentrating on his timing. He has to coördinate his vision and his swing. This coördination the opposing pitcher wants to upset from the moment he steps on the rubber and the game begins. The very duration of the stance itself, the windup and motion, and the form of delivery are all calculated to break the hitter’s equilibrium. Before winding up, the pitcher may hesitate, outstaring the notoriously anxious hitter in order to disturb him. Ted Lyons of the Chicago White Sox, master student of a hitter’s habits, brings his arms over his head now once, now twice, three or more times, his eyes intent on every move of the hitter, slowing up or quickening the pace of his windup and motion in varying degrees before he delivers the pitch. Cy Young, winner of most games in baseball history, — he won 511, — had four different pitching motions, turning his back on the hitter to hide the ball before he pitched. Fred Marberry, the great Washington relief pitcher, increased his effectiveness by throwing his free, non-pivot foot as well as the ball at the hitter to distract him.
II.
In 1884, when Connie Mack broke in as a catcher for Meriden, Charlie Radbourne — who won 60 games for Providence — could have cuffed, scraped, scratched, finger-nailed, applied resin, emery, or any other foreign substance to, or spit on the two balls the teams started and finished the game with. ‘Home-Run’ Baker, who hit two balls out of the park in the 1911 World Series to win his nickname, — and never more than twelve in a full season, — characterizes a defensive era in the game. During the last war it was impossible to get some of the nine foreign ingredients that enter into the manufacture of our baseball. To make up for the lack of the superior foreign yarn, our machines were adjusted to wind the domestic product tighter. In 1919, when the war was over, the foreign yarn was again available, but the same machines were used. The improved technique, the foreign ingredients, Babe Ruth and bat, conspired to revolutionize baseball. It seems prophetic, with due respect to the Babe, that our great American national game, so native and representative, could have been so completely refashioned by happenings on the other side of the world.
The importance of the bat has been stressed to such an extent that, since 1920, foreign substances have been barred to the pitcher, and the spitball outlawed. The resin bag, the sole concession, is used on the hands only to counteract perspiration. The cover of the ball, in two sections, is sewed together with stitches, slightly raised, in one long seam; today’s pitcher, after experimentation and experience, takes whatever advantage he can of its surface to make his various pitches more effective by gripping the ball across or along two rows of stitches, or along one row or on the smooth surface. The pitcher is always working with a shiny new ball. A game today will consume as many as eight dozen balls instead of the two roughed and battered ones which were the limit in 1884.
With the freak pitch outlawed and the accent put on hitting in the modern game, the pitcher has to be resourceful to win. He throws fast, slow, and breaking balls, all with variations. He is fortunate if his fast ball hops or sinks, slides or sails, because, if straight as a string or too true, it is ineffective. The ball has to do something at the last moment. The curve must break sharply and not hang. To add to his repertory of balls that break, the pitcher may develop a knuckle ball (fingers applied to the seam, knuckled against, instead of gripping the ball), a fork ball (the first two fingers forking the ball), or a screw ball (held approximately the same as an orthodox fast or curve ball but released with a twist of the wrist the reverse of a curve). The knuckle and fork balls flutter through the air, wavering, veering, or taking a sudden lurch, without revolving like the other pitches; they are the modern counterpart of the spitball, a dry spitter.
The pitcher studies the hitter’s stance, position at the plate, and swing, to establish the level of his natural batting stroke and to detect any possible weakness. Each hitter has his own individual style. The pitcher scouts his form and notes whether he holds the bat on the end or chokes it, is a free swinger or a chop hitter. He bears in mind whether the hitter crowds, or stands away from the plate, in front of or behind it, erect or crouched over it. Whether he straddles his legs or strides forward to hit, whether he lunges with his body or takes a quick cut with wrist and arm only, whether he pulls a ball, hits late or through the box — all these things are telltale and reveal a hitter’s liking for a certain pitch, high or low, in or out, fast, curve, or slow.
To fool the hitter — there’s the rub. With an assortment at his disposal, a pitcher tries to adapt the delivery, as well as the pitch, to the hitter’s weakness. Pitchers may have distinct forms of delivery and work differently on a given hitter; a pitcher throws overhand, three-quarter overhand (which is about midway between overhand and side-arm), side-arm, or underhand. A cross-fire is an emphasized side-arm pitch thrown against the forward foot as the body leans to the same side as the pitching arm at the time of the motion and delivery. Not the least important part of the delivery is the body follow-through to get more stuff on the pitch and to take pressure off the arm. Having determined the hitter’s weakness, the pitcher can throw to spots — for example, ‘high neck in,’ low outside, or letter high But he never forgets that, with all his equipment, he is trying to throw the hitter off his timing — probably the best way to fool him, to get him out. Without varying his motion, he throws a change-of-pace fast or curve ball, slows up, takes a little off or adds a little to his fast ball.
III.
Just as there are speed kings, so there are hitters without an apparent weakness. They have unusual vision, power, and great ability to coördinate these in the highest degree. They are the ranking, top hitters who hit everything in the strike zone well — perhaps one type of pitch less well than another. To these hitters the pitcher throws his best pitch and leaves the result to the law of averages. Joe DiMaggio straddles in a spread-eagle stance with his feet wide apart and bat already cocked. He advances his forward foot only a matter of inches, so that, with little stride, he doesn’t move his head, keeping his eyes steadily on the ball. He concentrates on the pitch; his weight equally distributed on both feet, he has perfect wrist action and power to drive the ball for distance. Mel Ott, on the other hand, lifts the front foot high just as the pitcher delivers the ball; he is not caught off balance or out of position, because he sets the foot down only after he has seen what type of pitch is coming. With DiMaggio’s stance one must have good wrist action and power. With Ott’s, there is a danger of taking a long step forward before one knows what is coming. But Mel does not commit himself.
Rogers Hornsby, one of the game’s greatest right-hand hitters, invariably took his position in the far rear corner of the batter’s box, stepped into the pitch, and hit to all fields equally well. Ty Cobb was always a step ahead of the pitcher. He must have been because he led the American League in hitting every year but one in the thirteen-year period 1907–1919. He outstudied the pitcher and took as many positions in the batter’s box as he thought necessary to counteract the type of motion and pitch he was likely to get. He adapted his stance to the pitcher who was then on the mound; for Red Faber, whose spitball broke sharply down, Cobb stood in front of the plate; for a curve-ball left-hander, Ty took a stance behind the plate in order to hit the curve after it broke, because, as Ty said, he could see it break and get hold of it the better. For Lefty O’Doul, one of the greatest teachers of hitting in the game, there are no outside pitches. Left stands close to the plate; his bat more than covers it; he is a natural right-field pull hitter. Babe Ruth, because of his tremendous, unequaled home-run power, and his ability to hit equally well all sorts of pitches with a liberal stride and a free swing, and consistently farther than any other player, has demonstrated that he had the greatest coördination and power of any hitter ever known. Ted Williams, of the Boston Red Sox, the only current .400 hitter in the game, completely loose and relaxed, has keen enough eyes never to offer at a bad pitch; he has good wrist and arm action, leverage, and power. Jimmy Foxx, next to Babe Ruth as a home-run hitter, steps into a ball, using his tremendous wrists and forearms for his powerful, long and line drives. These hitters do not lunge with the body; the front hip gives way for the swing, and the body follows through.
The game is carried back and forth between the pitcher and the hitter. The hitter notices what and where the pitchers are throwing. If the pitcher is getting him out consistently, for example, on a curve outside, the hitter changes his mode of attack. Adaptability is the hallmark of the big-league hitter. Joe Cronin, playing manager of the Red Sox, has changed in his brilliant career from a fast-ball, left-field pull hitter to a curve-ball and a right-field hitter, to and fro through the whole cycle and back again, according to where the pitchers are throwing. He has no apparent weakness, hits to all fields, and is one of the greatest ‘clutch’ hitters in the game. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
IV.
Like Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove was a fast-ball pitcher, and the hitters knew it. The hitters looked for this pitch; Lefty did not try to fool them by throwing anything else, but most of them were fooled, not by the type of pitch, but by his terrific speed. With two strikes on the hitter, Lefty did throw his curve at times, and that, too, led almost invariably to a strike-out. In 1935, Lefty had recovered from his first serious sore arm of the year before. Wear and tear, and the grind of many seasons, had taken their toll. Now he had changed his tactics, and was pitching curves and fast balls, one or the other. His control was practically perfect. On a day in that year in Washington, Heinie Manush, a great hitter, was at bat with two men on the bases. The game was at stake; the count was three balls and two strikes. Heinie stood there, confident, looking for Lefty’s fast ball. ‘Well,’ thought Heinie, ‘it might be a curve.’ Lefty was throwing the curve more and more now, but the chances with the count of three and two were that Lefty would throw his fast ball with everything he had on it. Fast or curve — he couldn’t throw anything else; he had nothing else to throw. Heinie broke his back striking out on the next pitch, the first fork ball Grove ever threw. For over a year, on the side lines, in the bullpen, between pitching starts, Lefty had practised and perfected this pitch before he threw it, and he waited for a crucial spot to use it. Lefty had realized his limitations. The hitters were getting to his fast and curve balls more than they used to. He wanted to add to his pitching equipment; he felt he had to. Heinie Manush anticipated, looked for, guessed a fast ball, possibly a curve, but Lefty fooled him with his new pitch, a fork ball.
Here was the perfect setup for outguessing a hitter. Lefty Grove’s development of a third pitch, the fork ball, is the greatest example in our time of complete, successful change in technique by one pitcher. When a speedball pitcher loses his fast one, he has to compensate for such loss by adding to his pitching equipment. Lefty both perfected his control and added a fork ball. Carl Hubbell’s screw ball, practically unhittable at first, made his fast ball and curve effective. Lefty Gomez, reaching that point in his career where he had to add to his fast and curve ball, developed and threw his first knuckle ball this year. Grove, Gomez, and Hubbell, three outstanding left-handers, — Grove and Gomez adding a fork ball and a knuckle ball respectively to their fast and curve balls when their speed was waning, Hubbell developing a screw ball early in his career to make it his best pitch and to become one of the game’s foremost southpaws, — so you have the build-up of great pitchers.
At first, the superspeed of Grove obviated the necessity of pitching brains. But, when his speed began to fade, Lefty turned his head. With his almost perfect control and the addition of his fork ball, Lefty now fools the hitter with his cunning. With Montaigne, we conceive of Socrates in place of Alexander, of brain for brawn, wit for whip. And this brings us to a fascinating part of the pitcher-hitter drama: Does a hitter guess? Does a pitcher try to outguess him? When the pitching process is no longer mechanical, how much of it is psychological? When the speed of a Johnson or a Grove is fading or gone, can the pitcher outguess the hitter?
We know that the pitcher studies the strength and weakness of every hitter and that the hitter notes every variety of pitch in the pitcher’s repertory; that the big-league hitter is resourceful, and quick to meet every new circumstance. Does he anticipate what the pitcher is going to throw? He can regulate his next pitch arbitrarily by the very last-second flick of the wrist. There is no set pattern for the order of the pitches. Possible combinations are so many that a formula of probability cannot be established. He may repeat the fast ball or curve ball indefinitely, or pitch them alternately; there is no mathematical certainty what the pitch will be. There is no harmony in the pattern of a pitcher’s pitches. And no human being has the power of divination.
But does this prevent a hitter from guessing? Does he merely hit what he sees if he can? Is it possible for a hitter to stand at the plate and use merely his vision, without trying to figure out what the pitcher might throw? The hitter bases his anticipation on the repertory of the pitcher, taking into account the score of the game, what the pitcher threw him the last time at bat, whether he hit that pitch or not, how many men are on base, and the present count on him. The guess is more than psychic, for there is some basis for it, some precedent for the next move; what is past is prologue.
The few extraordinary hitters whose exceptional vision and power to coördinate must be the basis for their talent can afford to be oblivious of anything but the flight of the ball. Hughie Duffy, who has the highest batting average in baseball history (he hit .438 in 1894), or Rogers Hornsby, another great right-hand hitter, may even deny that he did anything but hit what he saw. But variety usually makes a hitter think. When Ty Cobb changed his stance at the plate to hit the pitcher then facing him, he anticipated not only a certain type of motion but also the pitch that followed it. He studied past performance. Joe DiMaggio hit a home run to break Willie Keeler’s consecutive-games hitting record of 44, standing since 1897, and has since carried the record to 56 games. In hitting the home run off Dick Newsome, Red Sox pitcher, who has been very successful this year because of a good assortment of pitches, Joe explains: ‘I hit a fast ball; I knew he would come to that and was waiting for it; he had pitched knucklers, curves, and sinkers.’ Jimmie Foxx looks for a particular pitch when facing a pitcher — for example, a curve ball against a notorious curve-ball pitcher — and watches any other pitch go by. But when he has two strikes he cancels all thought of what the pitcher might throw; he then hits what he sees. Jimmie knows that if he looks for a certain pitch and guesses wrong, with two strikes on him, he will be handcuffed at the plate watching the pitch go by. Hank Greenberg, full of imagination, has guessed right most of the time — he hit 58 home runs one year.
Just as Lefty Grove perfected control of his not-so-speedy fast ball and curve, and added the fork ball to give him variety, so even the outstanding hitters have to change their mode of attack later when their vision and reactions are not quite so sharp as they used to be.
V.
The catcher squatting behind the hitter undoubtedly has the coign of vantage in the ball park; all the action takes place before him. Nothing is outside his view except the balls-and-strikes umpire behind him — which is at times no hardship. The receiver has a good pair of hands, shifts his feet gracefully for inside or outside pitches, and bends his knees, not his back, in an easy, rhythmic motion, as he stretches his arms to catch the ball below his belt. The catcher has to be able to cock his arm from any position, throw fast and accurately to the bases, field bunts like an infielder, and catch foul flies like an outfielder. He must be adept at catching a ball from any angle, and almost simultaneously tagging a runner at home plate. The catcher is the Cerberus of baseball.
These physical qualifications are only a part of a catcher’s equipment. He signals the pitcher what to throw, and this implies superior baseball brains on his part. But a pitcher can put a veto on a catcher’s judgment by shaking him off and waiting for another sign. The game cannot go on until he pitches. Every fan has seen a pitcher do this — like the judge who kept shaking his head from time to time while counsel was arguing; the lawyer finally turned to the jury and said, ‘Gentlemen, you might imagine that the shaking of his head by His Honor implied a difference of opinion, but you will notice if you remain here long enough that when His Honor shakes his head there is nothing in it.’ (Judges, if you are reading, please consider this obiter.) One would believe that a no-hit, no-run game, the acme of perfection, the goal of a pitcher, would satisfy even the most exacting battery mate. Yet, at the beginning of the seventh inning of a game under those conditions, ‘Sarge’ Connally, White Sox pitcher, said to his catcher, ‘Let’s mix ’em up; why don’t you call for my knuckler? ‘Sarge’ was probably bored with his own infallibility. He lost the no-hitter and the game on an error.
Of course, no player monopolizes the brains on a ball club. The catcher gives the signals only because he is in a better position than the pitcher to hide them. In a squatting position, the catcher hides the simple finger, fist, or finger-wiggle signs between his legs, complicating them somewhat with different combinations only when a runner on second base in direct line of vision with the signals may look in, perhaps solve them, and flash back another signal to the hitter.
Signal stealing is possible in many ways. The most prevalent self-betrayals are made by the pitcher and catcher themselves. Such detection requires the closest observation. A catcher, after having given the signal, get sets for the pitch; in doing so he may unintentionally, unconsciously, make a slight move — for example, to the right, in order to be in a better position to catch a right-hander’s curve ball. But more often it is the pitcher who reveals something either to the coaches on the base lines or — what is more telling — to the hitter standing in the batter’s box.
The pitcher will betray himself if he makes two distinct motions for two different pitches — as, for example, a side-arm delivery for the curve and overhand for the fast ball. A pitcher may also betray himself in his windup by raising his arms higher for the fast ball than for the curve. In some cases his eyes are more intent on the plate for one pitch than for another. Usually the curve is more difficult to control. If a pitcher has to make facial distortions, they should be the same for one pitch as for another.
A pitcher covers up the ball with his glove as he fixes it, to escape detection. Otherwise he may reveal that he is holding the ball tighter for a curve than for a fast ball, or even gripping the stitches differently for one than for the other. Eddie Collins, all-time star second baseman, was probably the greatest spy on the field or at bat in the history of the game. He was a master at ‘getting’ the pitch for himself somewhere in the pitcher’s manipulation of the ball or in his motion. This ability in no small part helped make him the great performer that he was.
Ball players would rather detect these idiosyncrasies for themselves, as they stand awaiting the pitch, than get a signal from the coach. The coach, on detecting something, gives a sign to the hitter either silently by some move — for instance, touching his chest — or by word of mouth — ‘Come on,’ for a curve. But this is dangerous unless the coach detects the pitches with one hundred per cent accuracy. There must be no doubt. Many times, in baseball, a club knows every pitch thrown and still loses. The hitter may be too anxious if he actually knows what is coming, or a doubt may upset him. And there is always the danger of a pitcher’s suspecting that he is ‘tipping’ himself off. He then deals in a bit of counter-espionage by making more emphatic to the opposition his revealing mannerism to encourage them, only to cross them up at a crucial time.
The whole club plays as a unit to win. The signs that the pitcher and catcher agree on reflect the collective ideas, the judgment of all the players on how to get the opposition out. Preventing runs from scoring is as important as making them. The players know how the pitcher intends to throw to each opponent. They review their strategy before game time, as a result of which they know how the battery is going to work, and they play accordingly. The shortstop and second baseman see the catcher’s signs and get the jump on the ball; sometimes they flash it by prearranged signal to the other players who are not in a position to see it. The outfielders can then lean a little, but only after the ball is actually released.
He is a poor catcher who doesn’t know at least as well as the pitcher what a hitter likes or doesn’t like, to which field he hits, what he did the last time, what he is likely to do this time at bat. The catcher is an on-the-spot witness, in a position to watch the hitter at first hand. He has to make quick decisions, bearing in mind the score, the inning, the number of men who on the bases, and other factors.
Pitchers and catchers are mutually helpful. It is encouraging to a pitcher when a catcher calls for the ball he wants to throw and corroborates his judgment. The pitcher very seldom shakes a catcher off, because they are thinking alike in a given situation. By working together they know each other’s system. Pitchers help catchers as much as catchers do pitchers. One appreciative catcher gives due credit to spit-baller Red Faber, knuckle-baller Ted Lyons, and fast-baller Tommy Thomas, all of the Chicago White Sox, for teaching him, as he caught them, much about catching and working with pitchers. Bill Dickey, great Yankee catcher, will readily admit that Herb Pennock taught him battery technique merely by catching a master and noting how he mixed up his pitches. Ray Schalk, Chicago White Sox, and Steve O’Neill, Cleveland Indians, were two of the greatest receivers and all-round workmen behind the plate in baseball history. Gabby Hartnett and Mickey Cochrane stood out as hitters as well as catchers, Mickey being probably the greatest inspirational catcher of our time.
The catcher works in harmony with the pitcher and dovetails his own judgment with the pitcher’s stuff. He finds out quickly the pitcher’s best ball and calls for it in the spots where it would be most effective. He knows whether a hitter is in a slump or dangerous enough to walk intentionally. He tries to keep the pitcher ahead of the hitter. If he succeeds, the pitcher is in a more advantageous position to work on the hitter with his assortment of pitches. But if the pitcher is in a hole — a two and nothing, three and one, or three and two count — he knows that the hitter is ready to hit. The next pitch may decide the ball game. The pitcher tries not to pitch a ‘cripple’ — that is, tries not to give the hitter the ball he hits best. But it is also dangerous to overrefine. Taking the physical as well as the psychological factors into consideration, the pitcher must at times give even the best hitter his best pitch under the circumstances. He pitches hard, lets the law of averages do its work, and never second-guesses himself. The pitcher throws a fast ball through the heart of the plate, and the hitter, surprised, may even take it. The obvious pitch may be the most strategic one.
The pitcher may throw overhand to take full advantage of the white shirts in the bleacher background. Breaking balls are more effective when thrown against the resistance of the wind. In the latter part of a day, when shadows are cast in a stadium ball park, the pitcher may change his tactics by throwing more fast balls than he did earlier in the game.
The players are not interested in the score, but merely in how many runs are necessary to tie and to win. They take nothing for granted in baseball. The idea is to win. The game’s the thing.
30th Anniversary Season! 🏈