In which year did U.S. Major League Baseball ban spitballs?

On August 16,1920, in the U.S. Major League Baseball game between the Cleveland Indians and the New York Yankees, the Indians shortstop Raymond J. Chapman (1891- 1920) was up to bat against Yankee pitcher Carl Mays (1891-1971). Chapman was hit in the head by a pitch from Mays and died 12 hours later the next day.

As of 2021, he was the only player to die directly from an injury received during a major league game. His death led baseball to establish a rule requiring umpires to replace the ball whenever it becomes dirty. Chapman’s death and sanitary concerns also led to the ban on spitballs after the 1920 season.

At the time, pitchers commonly dirtied the ball with soil, licorice, and tobacco juice, and scuffed, sandpapered, scarred, cut or spiked the ball, delivering an “earth-colored ball that traveled through the air erratically, tended to soften in the later innings, and, as it came over the plate, was very hard to see.”

The altered ball was called a spitball, an illegal baseball pitch in which the ball has been altered by the application of a foreign substance such as saliva or petroleum jelly. This application altered the wind resistance and weight on one side of the ball, causing it to move in an atypical manner. It also caused the ball to periodically slip out of the pitcher’s fingers without the usual spin that accompanies a pitch. The general term for altering the ball in any way was called ‘doctoring’.