[No Pepper]

The Slippery Elm Boys and the Wild Wet One

This is the story of the Spit Ball, of a time and the men living it gone by. It may invoke memories of the old dime store novel telling of western gunslingers against a horde of raving savages circling the wagon. Instead of his trusty six shooter, the lawless moundsman reaches into his mouth and unleashes a tricky wet bullet that scalps any unsuspecting warrior that wields a threatening tomahawk. In the dust bowls of great America, they called them the Slippery Elm Boys, a posse that legend has it tossed the Wet One.

The Wet One was at least three things to those who witnessed it and survived; good, bad, and ugly:

The spit ball was...unsanitary.

Some who toed the slab spat tobacco juice on one side of the ball to impart its defying action. Others dolloped a nice slip of good ol' saliva on their fingers before releasing the white pill. And who knows what else. Some critics pointed to the flu epidemic of 1918 as good reason to ban the pitch. Others just wanted to clean up the game. Along with other freak pitches,

The spit ball was...unsavory.

The game of base ball was originally played in social gatherings of gentlemen, so the purists thought. But in the Deadball Era, baseball was played by outcasts, out-of-work farmhands, and down-on-their-luck coal miners-- paid by tight-fisted magnates in one hand and by shady gamblers in the other. If there were rules that governed the game, they were meant to be broken, by any and all means possible. The rule of a winner was the strength of his pitching, and

The spit ball was all but...unhittable.

The pitch took an unpredictable path to the dish, where a hungry batsman, eager to mash it where they ain't, often missed it by a clean foot. It was a deadly weapon in the arsenal of a capable hurler, a psycological equalizer in the eternal battle between two men who wanted to knock each other out - spikes high and to the tune of chin music.

To be continued...