Baseball: All Antiseptic

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The quality of mercy may or may not be strained, but the quality of major-league baseball surely is. As General Manager Paul Richards of the Atlanta Braves says: "The only two leagues in which a player can hit .220 and get a raise are the American League and the National League." Last week, meeting in Mexico City, National League owners decided to spread the talent even thinner. Following the lead of the American League, which will expand to twelve teams in 1969, they voted to grant new franchises to two as yet unnamed cities (probably San Diego and Dallas) "not later than 1971."

Having gone expansionist, the big-league bosses went antiseptic by cracking down on the illegal but ubiquitous spitball—to the point where a pitcher can't even pick his teeth without being bounced out of the ball game. And if the loss of the good old spitter wasn't enough, the owners also decided to dispense with most of those endearing little rituals that give the game color. In the interest of speeding things up, no longer may a pitcher stand out there shaking off catcher's sign after sign while tension mounts; no longer will a reliever trudge in from the faraway bullpen like a matador with his warmup jacket slung over his pitching arm (he will now ride in a golf cart); no longer will a batter try to rattle the pitcher by demanding that the umpire examine the ball. What's left to relieve the boredom? The seventh-inning stretch.