The Pine-Tar Incident. When talk turns to bats, the brouhaha over George Brett’s pine tar bat invariably comes up. And so it must be in this book, too, because it was a dramatic and revealing moment.

The event in question occurred on July 24, 1983. Brett came to the plate in the visitor’s half of the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium. He and his Royals teammates were down 4-3, and there were two down and a man on. Brett, with the simple efficiency of a man who was arguably the best hitter in baseball at that moment, hit the ball out of the park.

Billy Martin, then in his umpteenth (but not his last) tour of duty with the Yankees, emerged from the Yankees dugout and played the card he had been saving for just such an occasion: he complained to the umpire that Brett had used an illegal bat.

Craig Nettles had observed two weeks earlier that Brett’s bat was practically awash in pine tar. Brett, you see, was one of the last players in the majors to hit barehanded rather than using batting gloves. "I like the feel of raw hands on raw wood," Brett said. Apparently, word got around the Yankees dugout. "I had known about the tar," said Rich Gossage, the Yankees relief pitcher who gave up Brett’s homer. "But when I watched that ball, all I could think of was a two-run homer."

But more conniving minds prevailed, at least that day. Martin made his case to the umpires: the pine tar was too far up on the bat. He referred to Rule 1.10c, which then specified, "The bat handle, for not more than eighteen inches from its end, may be covered or treated with any material (including pine tar) to improve the grip. Any such material, pine tar included, which extends past the eighteen-inch limitation, in the umpire’s judgment, shall cause the bat to be removed from the game."

Then there’s Rule 6.06d: "He [who] uses or attempts to use a bat that . . . has been altered or tampered with in such a way to improve the distance factor . . . [shall be] called out [and] the player shall be ejected from the game."

Ergo, concluded Martin, there’s no home run, and Brett is outta here.

After some discussion, the bat was duly examined. Home plate umpire Tim McClelland, lacking another suitable measuring device, laid the bat on the plate, which is seventeen inches across. The tar extended quite a bit more than another inch.

"I was laughing at the umpires when they were deciding what to do," Brett said later. His smile disappeared when, after the umpires huddled, he was declared out. The Yankees were the winners, 4-3.

Brett went berserk. He actually made contact with the umpires and, in his words, told them "everything my father used to tell me when I brought home my report card." He ended up with his head locked under the arm of umpire-in-chief Joe Brinkman.

That’s not the end of the story, of course. The Royals filed a formal protest with American League President Lee MacPhail. Even they probably didn’t think much of their chances, given that in MacPhail’s ten years in office he had never upheld a protest. Five days later he did the unexpected and reversed the umps’ decision.

"It is the position of this office that the umpires’ interpretation, while technically defensible, is not in accord with the intent or spirit of the rules and that the rules do not provide that a hitter be called out for excessive use of pine tar. The rules provide instead that the bat be removed from the game. The protest of the Kansas City club is therefore upheld, and the home run by Brett is permitted to stand. The score of the game becomes 5-4 Kansas City with Kansas City at bat and two out in the top of the ninth inning." Thus, Brett’s homer was restored and the game was completed (final score: 5-4). Today, minor word changes have been made in The Book.

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