Mudcat Grant Is Now Paid to Talk, Not Pitch

Jim (Mudcat) Grant once again is counting the days to spring training. But this time he will be there to talk, not pitch.

And the former Minnesota Twins and Cleveland Indians right-hander is likely to shock some tourists with tales of how he used to doctor the baseball and how he hid the stuff that makes the ball do strange things.

“Of course we used sandpaper, we used spit, we used stickum, we used grease. We used everything that we possibly could,” said Grant when asked about the way it was when he pitched in the majors from 1958 through 1971.

Grant, who is among a group of former major leaguers hired by Sunball Spring Training Tours to escort fans through a week of exhibition games and give them an inside look at baseball, is sure to shock with some of his insights.

Sure, it still goes on, he said about doctoring the baseball, but: “Now, when you get caught it’s almost as if you committed a serious crime. In those days, it was more like you got caught with your hands in the cookie jar.”

Grant blames the media for the change, because “they make such a big deal about it.”

“They’ve taken a lot away from the pitcher today,” he said.

Grant, who had a 145-119 record in 14 major league seasons, said he did not use an “awful lot” of banned substances.

“Every now and then I used a little detergent here and there and a little sandpaper here and there,” he said.

“It was to plant an idea in a hitters’ mind. If you threw one pitch that the hitter knew that something was on the ball, then you had that hitter for the rest of the game.”

The sandpaper, he said, was more of a psychological ploy than to get a batter out.

“If you let the sandpaper peek out of your glove just a little bit, the hitter would say, ‘He’s cheating. He’s cheating,’ and you had him thinking,” Grant said.

Pitchers who used sandpaper to scuff the ball and were not anxious to let the batter or anyone else see it had various hiding places.

“You could put sandpaper in your shoe, in your cap, in your glove, or here,” Grant said, putting a hand into his arm pit.

Grant expects a bigger than usual crowd at the Twins’ camp in Orlando, Fla., because of their World Series triumph.

And, he will be ready to “sit around the pool and spin yarns about the Twins of 20 years ago,” when he pitched for them.

Of the things that have changed since then, one innovation he doesn’t like is the designated hitter rule.

“It takes something away from ability of the pitcher. Pitchers should learn to hit, should learn to bunt, should learn to run bases. It adds to the game of baseball,” he said.

“If you just pitch and sit you are not really a baseball player. You are are a specialist who can’t do this and can’t do this.”

Some of Grant’s fondest memories are of his hitting, especially the three-run home run he hit in the sixth game of the 1965 World Series against the Dodgers.

“Howie Reed threw a hanging curveball,” he remembered of that moment more than 22 years ago.

And, then, there were the hits he got when he was with the Indians.

“Frank Lane used to give pitchers a $100 suit if they got two hits in a game,” Grant said of the then Indians general manager. “I was a well suited pitcher the days I pitched for the Indians.”

Grant was in New York to plan for the Sunball Tours with other spring training guides who will be at the other camps. They include such other former players as Ray Sadecki, Frank Thomas, Jim Northrup, Chris Short, Moose Skowron, Johnny Blanchard and Gary Bell.