Ted Simmons was feeling groovy during the summer of 1975. Long mane flowing, he swung free and easy from both sides of the plate, hitting for high average, driving in runs and making consistent contact.
Big-league baseball, though, wasn’t hip to the grooves Simmons made in his bats, even though the Cardinals catcher claimed the alterations were done to preserve the lumber, not enhance his hitting.
Simmons paid a price for not knowing the rules. Umpires nullified a home run he hit against the Padres, deeming he used an illegal bat.
Hot hitter
After hitting .271 over the first two months of the 1975 season, Simmons surged. He hit .370 for the month of June and did even better in July. When the Cardinals went to San Diego for a series against the Padres after the all-star break, Simmons was hitting .326 for the season, with a .400 on-base percentage and .511 slugging mark.
“Ted is just about a batting title away from being recognized as the best hitter in the league,” Cardinals pitcher John Curtis told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “He has received not nearly the recognition he deserves, and maybe a batting (title) is what will take care of that.”
During the first game of a Sunday doubleheader at San Diego, when Simmons contributed three hits, a walk and a RBI in the Cardinals’ 3-1 victory, Padres manager John McNamara noticed cuts in some of the baseballs. After Simmons flied out to end the third inning, the ball was brought to the Padres’ dugout. “We could see the lined scraped marks on the ball and we knew they had to have been made by something on the bat,” McNamara later told the Associated Press. Boxscore
That year, big-league baseball introduced a rule banning alteration of the hitting surface of the bat from the tip to within 18 inches of the handle bottom, according to the Associated Press.
Because he wasn’t certain Simmons had broken the rule, McNamara opted not to do anything during Game 1 of the doubleheader. Simmons sat out Game 2.
Bad bat
The next night, July 21, Simmons was back in the lineup at the cleanup spot, and McNamara was on alert. “I told the catcher (Bob Davis) to check out Simmons’ bat when he comes to the plate and see if it’s grooved,” McNamara said to the Associated Press.
In Simmons’ first plate appearance, he drew a walk. Davis informed McNamara the bat was grooved.
When Simmons batted again, leading off the fourth, he clouted a home run to left against Brent Strom. As Simmons rounded the bases, McNamara asked plate umpire Art Williams to check the bat for grooves. Williams did, determined the bat was modified against the rules and called Simmons out as he crossed the plate, nullifying the home run.
Umpire crew chief Ed Vargo confiscated the bat. “The rules say a bat can’t be tampered with 18 inches above the handle,” Vargo said to the Associated Press. “This one has grooves cut in it. It is clearly illegal.”
Noting he made no attempt to hide the bat, Simmons told the Post-Dispatch, “I was not aware of the new rule against grooving. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have grooved the bat.”
According to the Associated Press, Simmons said he used a knife to put grooves in the bat so that it wouldn’t fray. “What I did is actually what players have been doing for the past 50 or 60 years,” he said.
Simmons explained to the Post-Dispatch, “Grooving the bat doesn’t do anything to make the ball go farther or powerize it. The idea is to keep the bats from fraying. When the bats fray, you just throw them away (because) they’re no good anymore. Grooving protects the grains that are farthest from the center from breaking because of the vibration of the contact. Grooving just saves bats.”
Regarding McNamara’s decision to challenge the use of the bat after the home run, Simmons said the Padres manager “deserves credit for doing his homework,” the Post-Dispatch reported.
A notch above
After the ruling, Simmons took heat from the San Diego spectators. As he put it to the Post-Dispatch, “Unfortunately, the fans got uptight and I had to put up with the freaking.”
Swinging a smooth stick in his next plate appearance, Simmons smacked a double, silencing the detractors. His work behind the plate was impressive, too. Making his major-league debut, Harry Rasmussen (who later changed his name to Eric) followed the guidance of his catcher and pitched a shutout for the Cardinals. Boxscore
Though he stopped grooving his bats, Simmons didn’t stop hitting. The lumber may have frayed like shredded wheat from all the hard contact he made. For the month of July, Simmons hit .417 with an on-base percentage of .500 (43 hits and 17 walks in 120 plate appearances).
He hit .313 for August and .324 for September, finishing with a season batting mark of .332. Only Bill Madlock of the Cubs had a higher batting average (.354) in the league that season.
Simmons totaled 193 hits, 100 RBI and fanned a mere 35 times in 581 at-bats. He did that while catching more games (154) than anyone else in the league.
Three weeks after the incident in San Diego, Simmons lent one of his bats to Doug Rader during a Cardinals series at Houston. The Astros third baseman used it to belt a three-run homer against Al Hrabosky, but Simmons countered with a two-run shot and the Cardinals won, 5-4. Boxscore
Asked about Rader homering with a Simmons bat, the Cardinals catcher quipped to the Post-Dispatch, “Rader has done me enough favors by mishandling some of my bouncers to his backhand.”