Eearly in the training season, Charley Dressen split his squad down the middle and the two halves -- designated in the box score as the Have Nots and Haven't Eithers -- played a ball game that ended in a tie. "The Senators this year," wrote Bob Addie in the "Washington Post," "are so bad they can't beat themselves."

Since then Dressen's disciples have contrived to beat themselves in some games and the opposition in others, same as all the clubs do during the muscletone season. No effort has been made to check the records, but dispatches from the camps have left the impression that there has been an uncommon number of extra-inning games and low scores this spring.

If that is so, then some original thinker is going to declare in the paper one of these mornings that, "the pitchers are ahead of the hitters." After championship play starts the hitters will catch up, Mickey Mantle win lose a ball in Westchester County, and the inevitable cry of protest will arise about the lively ball.

It happens every year, so maybe now is as good a time as any to propose a remedy. When the pitcher is being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, the rules ought to permit him to retaliate against the batter, i.e., to spit in his eye. The suggestion is put forward in all seriousness. If, as some believe, emphasis on hitting has knocked the game out of joint, then the rulemakers could take a long step toward restoring balance between offense and defense by returning the spitball to respectability.

Because spit is a horrid word, misconceptions have grown up regarding the irrigated delivery. Authors who should know better have written that it was ruled out because it was a dangerous pitch, difficult to control and a menace to the batter's life and limb. In the popular mind, the spitter is not only unsanitary and illegal but intrinsically dishonest, a cheating device to be employed only by a low, unprincipled cad.

Actually it is an effective pitch when mastered, no more difficult to control than any other. Leaders of the saliva set like Red Faber, Clarence Mitchell, Bill Doak and Burleigh Grimes were no wilder than their arid playmates, and if the records were to show that Grimes potted more batsmen than some of his contemporaries, that should be attributed to his combative disposition, not his moist delivery.

The only thing wrong with the spitter is that it has been illegal since 1920. Its use was prohibited that year, except by pitchers already employing it in the majors. Faber continued on his slobbery way through 1933 and Grimes was still drooling in 1934, but when they departed that was the end of sanctioned expectorations.

There are qualified baseball men who believe that legalizing the spitter would do more than arm the pitcher with a weapon which he needs. There is at least some ground for a belief that it would mitigate the plague of sore arms which is an occupational hazard blighting many young lives.

All the evidence indicates that the pitch was easy on the arm, for Faber was still with the White Sox at forty-six and Doak, Mitchell and Grimes all pitched into or past their fortieth year.

When they departed, spitting didn't cease all together, though only Ted Williams has done it openly. Preacher Roe has confessed that he slipped in a wet one now and then when he pitched for the Dodgers, Lew Burdette is accused of it, and Nelson Potter got caught at it.

The records credit Potter with nineteen victories for the pennant-winning Browns of 1944 but with a little more guile he could have made it twenty. He was winning another game that summer when the umpire detected more on the ball than the A. J. Reach Co. had put there. "Shame!" cried the umpire, "Begone."

In 1920 the growing popularity of Babe Ruth made fans and club owners home run conscious, and trick deliveries were outlawed to aid the batters and draw more customers. The profit motive sired the rule and it is for personal profit that pitchers occasionally violate it, moistening fingertip with the tongue or with a smidgeon of perspiration from brow, neck or forearm.

They aren't necessarily evil characters. There is a classic tale about the estimable Tommy Bridges, Detroit's wonderful little curve ball pitcher, struggling to protect a one-run lead over Washington with menacing Stan Spence at bat.

He got Spence on three dipping strikes whose erratic behavior brought loud prtests from the batter and his manager, ossie Bluege. Spence, Bluege and Bill Summers, the umpire, trooped out to the mound where Summers put the question bluntly: Had Bridges thrown a spitter?

Tommy was deeply hurt. This, he told Summers reproachfully, was tantamount to a charge of cheating. As the delegation turned away, defeated, Bridges cupped his glove to his mouth.

"Hey, Bill," he called in a stage whisper, "wasn't that last one a sweetheart?"

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