The End of the Spitball: Sloppy, Dirty, Disgusting … and Almost Impossible to Get Rid Of

EDITOR’S NOTE: We were informed by Mike Lackey’s family that Mike passed away before he could see his article in print. It is our honor to publish it here in his memory.

 

Frank Shellenback was the last legal spitball pitcher when he retired in 1938, but it took several more years for the “wet one” to disappear for good. (SABR-RUCKER ARCHIVE)

 

When Frank Shellenback retired as a player and took a job as a coach with the St. Louis Browns in 1938, it appeared that so-called Organized Baseball’s last legal spitball pitcher had finally passed from the scene. And it was true, at the time.1

But during its heyday in the Deadball Era, the spitball—maddeningly elusive for batters and treacherous for fielders—was no easier to get rid of than it was to hit or catch. True to its nature, for more than two decades after the first attempts to ban it, the slippery, much-reviled spitter—denounced as “sloppy, dirty and disgusting” as far back as 1909—took a long, strange farewell tour through baseball’s minor leagues.2 Contrary to what has been widely believed and often repeated—that the last legal spitball was thrown in 1934—the last officially sanctioned spitball was not thrown until 1941.3

Like the spitball itself, its last legal purveyors were long-running throwbacks to deadball days. Shellenback was typical; he won nine games for the Chicago White Sox as a 19-year-old rookie in 1918. But when two of the Sox top pitchers returned from World War I service—Red Faber from the Navy and Lefty Williams from war-related work in a shipyard—Shellenback figured less prominently in the team’s plans. Then, just as baseball was moving to ban the spitball, the White Sox decided they didn’t need him. However, there might have been an element of spite in the decision. The pitcher recalled years later that as the deadline approached for finalizing the list of established spitballers who would be permitted to continue using the pitch in the major leagues, he was involved in “a little contract wrangle” with the White Sox.4 Demoted to the minor leagues, Shellenback was ineligible to be grandfathered. Ultimately 17 were granted the career-saving privilege of throwing the spitter as long as they remained in the big leagues. Shellenback was forever barred from using his best pitch in the majors.

Fortunately for him, the minor leagues did not fall into lockstep with the majors with regard to the wet one. While the major leagues moved to get rid of it, each minor league was left to set its own course. Some circuits beat the majors to the punch: The Western League and the American Association banned the pitch before the 1918 season, the latter instructing umpires to fine suspected cheaters $25 for each offense.5,6 Most bans were immediate and complete, without exceptions, exemptions, grace periods or grandfathers. A few leagues followed the example of the majors and created their own grandfather lists. Some dealt with would-be spitballers on a case-by-case basis. This patchwork of differing policies sometimes required negotiated compromises when the champions of different leagues met in post-season series. Examples emerged almost immediately, such as the “Minor World Series” pitting the city of Vernon of the “wet” Pacific Coast League against St. Paul of the “dry” American Association in 1919.7 As The Sporting News acknowledged, there was “no uniformity regarding the spitter in the leagues of professional baseball.” The editors disapproved of the pitch, but they weren’t concerned about this state of affairs “because it will be only a year or two until it passes out.”8

Four years after his retirement, Shellenback was among the first five players chosen for the Pacific Coast League Hall of Fame.15 When SABR’s Rob Neyer attempted to rank the best spitballs of all time, legal or otherwise, his Top 10 featured six Hall of Famers—and Frank Shellenback.16

 

The baseball journey of spitballer Clarence Mitchell was long and convoluted. (SABR-RUCKER ARCHIVE)

 

Shellenback may have been the most noteworthy spitballer to pass through the PCL in the 1920s and ’30s, but he was not the only one. Vean Gregg, not a spitballer for most of his career, got permission to try it when he made an abortive comeback attempt with Sacramento in 1927.17 Doc Crandall and Harry Krause were on the league’s 1929 list of seven registered spitballers, though they were both near the end their careers.18 As they faded out, Shellenback found himself a member of an increasingly exclusive club. By the end of the 1932 season, he was “the only spitball pitcher of record in the minors.”19 But the number ticked up again in the mid-1930s when longtime PCL campaigners Ray Keating and Al “Pudgy” Gould, both in their 40s, attempted comebacks. As late as 1934, David P. Fleming, president of the Los Angeles Angels, was sufficiently exercised over the league’s continuing hospitality to aging spitball artists that he threatened to protest to Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.20

The immediate cause of Fleming’s annoyance was the signing of two of the major leagues’ 17 grandfathers, Jack Quinn and Clarence Mitchell, by the Hollywood Stars and the Mission Reds. Several of these throwbacks simply refused to go away. And the longer they persisted, the more controversy trailed after them. Because just as the major leagues’ ban on the spitball did not automatically apply to the minors, the grandfathers’ exemption did not cover all of what was then recognized as Organized Baseball.21 Wherever they went outside the American and National leagues, the old-timers had to seek permission to use the spitball on a league-by-league basis, repeatedly reigniting debate over the pitch.

After throwing the major leagues’ last legal spitball in 1934, the Cardinals hired Burleigh Grimes as a player-manager in their minor league system, where he continued throwing his spitball until he retired at the end of the 1935 season. (SABR-RUCKER ARCHIVE)

 

The experience of Burleigh Grimes is instructive. Released by the Pittsburgh Pirates after delivering the major leagues’ last legal spitball in September 1934, he was approached by the St. Louis Cardinals about a managing job in their extensive minor-league system. Since Grimes still wanted to pitch (and the organization wanted him to, needing a gate attraction to justify his salary demands), the Cards went shopping for a league that would have him.22 He was turned down by the Western Association and the Piedmont League. Grimes sent an inquiry to the Mission Reds, but they showed no interest.23 With the start of the season approaching, he pursued no further PCL possibilities. The Cardinals finally found “Old Stubblebeard” a home with the Bloomington Bloomers of the Class B Three-I League in 1935, where he closed out his pitching career by going 10–5.24

Grimes wasn’t the first spitballing grandfather the Cardinals had sought to employ in their farm system. In 1931, they had asked the American Association to let Bill Doak pitch for Columbus. Spittin’ Bill, 40 years old, hadn’t pitched in nearly two years and was described as “out of a job and broke.”25 Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey framed his application as an effort to help out a needy old ballplayer, but some observers suspected the wily Rickey thought Doak could still be useful stifling late-inning rallies with a pitch that most opposing batters had never seen before. Rickey was pilloried for trying to sneak the “objectional spitball” back into the league, which quickly shot down the request.26, 27

As for Quinn and Mitchell, the two graybeards whose Pacific Coast sojourn had triggered a flap there in 1934, both still had miles to go exploring increasingly obscure corners of professional baseball. Quinn, hired to manage Johnstown in the Class C Middle Atlantic League in July 1935, immediately sought license to throw the spitball.28 He was still awaiting a decision two weeks later when his Johnstown Johnnies found themselves on the receiving end of a barrage of hits in Zanesville, Ohio. With the game clearly out of control, Quinn—who wasn’t on his team’s active roster—received the opposing manager’s one-time-only permission to trot out the spitball in hopes of saving what was left of Johnstown’s pitching staff. “Employing a mouthful of slippery elm to raise the moisture to wet the horsehide,” Quinn, a month past his 52nd birthday, “displayed the same cunning that kept him active in the big show for more than 25 years.”29, 30 He got the last six outs without giving up a run, allowing just two infield hits. Final score was 18–0. Quinn never pitched again.

Meanwhile Clarence Mitchell, one of two left-handers among the 17 major-league grandfathers, went on a particularly long and convoluted journey. By this time even The Sporting News, never a fan of the spitball, had argued without success that the American Association should accept Mitchell and suggested it would be “a gracious thing” if the few surviving grandfathers were “permitted to pursue their calling in either the majors or the minors until they must call it a day.”31, 32 After two years in the Pacific Coast League, Mitchell gravitated to his native Nebraska. In 1936 he joined the Omaha Robin Hoods after his “saliva tossing” garnered the unanimous approval of members of the Western League, which had been officially dry for more than 15 years.33, 34 In 1937 he served as player-manager of the Mayfield Clothiers in the Class D Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee (“Kitty”) League, where he was described (inaccurately) as “the only spitball hurler left in active baseball competition.”35

Mitchell spent 1938 and 1939 managing and pitching for a semipro team in Broken Bow, Nebraska.36 Then he got one more chance in the professional ranks. With a unanimous vote by its owners, the Class B Southeastern League welcomed him as the first spitball pitcher in its four-year history, at the same time insisting that “only Mitchell would be given this privilege.”37, 38, 39, 40 Joining the Meridian Bears of Mississippi, the 49-year-old spitballer took the mound once during his brief time with the team. The box score for the May 9, 1940, game shows “C. Mitchell”—not to be confused with the Bears’ 25-year-old center fielder Joe Bob Mitchell—among a parade of six Meridian pitchers as the Bears lost 15–14 in 11 innings to the Anniston Rams. A week later, with Meridian in last place, Clarence Mitchell was fired.42

As of February 2025, Baseball Reference showed Mitchell in one game in the Texas League in 1942, when he was 51 years old. Contemporary news coverage makes it clear that pitcher was actually the spitballer’s 20-year-old son, Clarence Mitchell Jr., who was released after a single relief appearance for Oklahoma City.43 But the idea of wet ones still flying in that neighborhood wouldn’t have been particularly startling. Throughout the spitball’s slow, stubborn retreat into oblivion, no other organization was as spitter-friendly as the Texas League.

 

Snipe Conley became a folk hero in Texas, playing and managing in the Texas League from 1918 to 1927 before mounting a comeback attempt at age 36. (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)

 

And that, fittingly, is where we meet James Patrick Michael “Snipe” Conley.44 Conley was born in Pennsylvania in 1892. He started the 1913 season with the Reading, Pennsylvania, club in the United States League, an outlaw league that was not a party to the National Agreement that governed affiliated baseball.45 When that circuit folded, he joined a Bloomer Girls team which, like many ostensibly “all-girl” nines of the time, strengthened its lineup with two or three men.46,47 Conley broke into affiliated baseball in 1914 and spent two years with the Baltimore Terrapins in the Federal League. As a rookie, he showed “speed, a fine curve and a fairly nice slow ball.”48 It’s also possible Conley learned the spitball in Baltimore, where his teammates included the noted spitballers Jack Quinn and Frank Smith. After the demise of the Federal League he landed in the Texas League, where he was employing the moistened delivery at least occasionally when he won 19 straight games in 1917 and was drafted from Dallas by the Cincinnati Reds.49 He lasted a month with the Reds in 1918; they were about to send him to Toronto, but he asked to go back to Dallas instead.50 He pitched and managed there until 1927 and became a folk hero in Texas, recalled in later years as a “fabulous spitball ace.”51

In 1923, the league also permitted each team “to carry two spitball pitchers…[whose] names must be certified to the league president and to all umpires.”56 New spitballers were still permitted to enter the league in 1924.57 By the end of the 1925 season, 11 of them were active and in 1927, the league still tolerated one on every team.58 The Sporting News, which classed the spitball with the emery ball, the nail ball and other freak deliveries as an offense against “the ethics and honor of the sport,” periodically chided the Texas League for “doing something that is contrary to the rules of baseball” and for trafficking in what was potentially “an unorthodox and an illegal game.”59, 60 The editors added that the circuit apparently persisted in this perverse behavior “merely because it happens to be the Texas League.”61

Over 12 seasons, Conley won 148 games for Dallas. In 1928, he was hired to manage Jackson in the Class D Cotton States League. Conley, who usually batted over .280 in the minor leagues and “fielded his position like a shortstop,” did some pitching for the Senators (possibly without the spitball) but played mostly the infield and outfield.62, 63 He led the team to third place in the first half of the split season but was fired after a slow start to the second half.64 With that it appeared that Conley was finished in pro ball at age 36.

He caught on with a semipro team sponsored by a West Texas oil company and that’s where George Schepps, president of the Dallas Rebels, found him in 1941, still pitching.65 At the time, the Texas League was classified A-1, an intermediate step between Class A and the minors’ top level, Class AA, and Schepps believed Conley could still win at that level “because he can use his spitball and because he is still in perfect physical condition.” Conley would be the beneficiary of a quirky league rule that permitted any approved spitballer who had been in the league in 1925 to return any time with his full arsenal of weapons.66

Snipe Conley was 49 years old—even older than some news accounts had it—when he took the mound against the San Antonio Missions on June 25, 1941.67 The final score was an inelegant 11–6, but Conley went the distance and secured the victory. His statistics were spoiled only by five runs in the ninth inning. Before that, he was “just as crafty, just as speedy and just as effective” as in his prime. One reporter covering the contest observed that Conley was facing batters “who were going to grammar school” in 1917 when he won 19 straight.68 In fact, at least five of San Antonio’s players, including future American League stolen-base leader Bob Dillinger, hadn’t been born yet.

Some suggested that Conley’s resurrection was a stunt, but he had won an official league game and his performance was sufficiently encouraging to earn him another start.69 It came under the lights in Dallas on July 27, 1941, and by that time another old spitballer had been revived to go against him. The Cuban right-hander Oscar Tuero had pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1918 to 1920 and was an early candidate for grandfather status but, like Frank Shellenback, missed out when he was sent down before the list was finalized.70 Since then he had led a nomadic existence, laboring through 1939 in more than a half-dozen minor leagues and in Cuba, probably getting by most of the time without the spitball. A typical news item used the past tense when it said Tuero “was a spitball pitcher” before it was outlawed.71 He once claimed he was glad the pitch was banned;72 on the other hand, late in his career he petitioned, unsuccessfully, to fling spitballs in the Carolina League.73

Tuero might have harbored dreams of a major-league comeback as late as 1933, when he was in spring training with the Cincinnati Reds.74 Listed at 5‘81⁄2” and 158 pounds in his youth, by 1941 he was 47 years old, graying, balding and “rotund,” pitching batting practice for the Texas League’s Shreveport Sports.75 Only days after Conley won his first start for Dallas, the Sports activated Tuero. Like Conley, Tuero was still eligible to use the spitter because he was on the Texas League grandfather list and had been in the league in 1925. Shreveport tried him out three times in relief. He allowed two runs in 5 2/3 innings while striking out four, walking none and earning a win on July 4, when he worked in both games of a doubleheader.76 With that the stage was set for a matchup of what the newspapers carefully specified were two “authorized” spitballers.77 Since neither had pitched in Class A-1 or higher in the past two years, another eccentric Texas League rule categorized them both as rookies.78

All these doings were widely publicized. The Associated Press coverage of Conley’s comeback was picked up by papers all over the state, and he was the subject of a long column by J.G. Taylor Spink in The Sporting News.79 On the day of the encounter between Conley and Tuero, the Shreveport Times ran an eight-column, all-caps banner headline: “SPITBALL HURLERS MEET TODAY.”80

A classic pitchers’ duel was probably too much to expect. Tuero lasted just two-thirds of an inning, leaving Conley to carry on and secure his place as affiliated baseball’s last “authorized” spitball pitcher. He completed four innings but retired after failing to get an out in the fifth, holding a 5–4 lead. Dallas won 10–4, the victory credited to reliever Garth “Red” Mann, who struck out eight and did not allow a baserunner in the last five innings.81

That marked the end of what one columnist called the “Snipe Conley comeback hippodrome.”82 Oscar Tuero, however, did pitch again. Dropped by Shreveport after the Dallas game, he was picked up by the last-place Marshall Tigers of the Cotton States League and pitched eight innings in a 3–1 loss to the El Dorado Oilers on August 31, 1941. News coverage in Marshall, Texas, and nearby Shreveport did not indicate he had permission to use the spitball; a pre-game story noted only, in the past tense again, that Tuero “was a whiz back in the days of the spitballer.”83

But Conley wasn’t quite ready to leave the stage. In 1958, at 66, he was the star attraction in a series of old-timers games across Texas. He always “made a great show of wetting the ball” and “had his spitball working” when the old-timers’ appearance contributed to “the largest crowd of the season” for a Texas League game in Dallas.84, 85 In 1973, five years before his death, Snipe Conley was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.

MIKE LACKEY was a newspaperman beginning his career at the Lima News in Lima, Ohio, in 1972. He worked successively as a sportswriter, reporter, feature writer, city editor and columnist before retiring in 2008. He was lifelong Cincinnati Reds fan. Mike’s sisters, Lynne, Lara, and Lu Ann, and the entire Lackey family extend their gratitude to SABR for giving Mike a place to celebrate his love of baseball.

 

Notes

1. “Browns Appoint Former Coast Player as Coach,” Capital City News (Jefferson City, Missouri), November 18, 1938, 12.

2. “Symposium Upon the Spit Ball” in John B. Foster, ed., Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide (American Sports Publishing Co., 1909), 47.

3. Brian McKenna, “Frank Shellenback,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/frank-shellenback/.

4. J.G. Taylor Spink, “Looping the Loops,” The Sporting News, March 25, 1953, 10.

5. Sec Taylor, “St. Joseph Will Open Baseball Season at Des Moines on May 1,” Des Moines Register, March 5, 1918, 6.

6. James Crusinberry, “Kick Spitball Out of Pastime at A.A. Session,” Chicago Tribune, December 18, 1917, 15.

7. “Minor World Series Facts,” Los Angeles Evening Express, October 7, 1919, 26.

8. “Making Landis Do the Chores,” The Sporting News, January 27, 1921, 4.

9. “Reprieve for Clarence Mitchell,” The Sporting News, February 8, 1934, 4.

10. Charles F. Faber and Richard B. Faber, Spitballers: The Last Legal Hurlers of the Wet One (McFarland & Co. Inc., 2006), 12.

11. “Veteran Pitcher of Hollywood Sets New Mark,” Modesto (California) Bee, April 6, 1934, 34.

12. “Necrology,” The Sporting News, July 6, 1955, 30.

13. Art Cohn, “Cohn-ing Tower,” Oakland Tribune, May 19, 1938, 24.

14. “Angels Blank Padres, 9 to 0,” Oakland Tribune, August 21, 1938, 16. See also “Seals Whip Padres Twice,” Oakland Tribune, July 24, 1938, 12-A; and “Sacramento Gains Tie With Angels for Coast Top,” Albany (Oregon) Democrat-Herald, August 4, 1938.

15. “Five Chosen for Coast League’s Hall of Fame,” Pasadena Post, April 21, 1942, 8.

16. Rob Neyer, “The Unsanitary Spitball,” in Bill James and Rob Neyer, The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches (Simon & Schuster, 2004), 58.

17. Rudy Hickey, “Baseball,” Sacramento Bee, May 17, 1927, 24.

18. “Senators Monopolize Spitball Pitchers,” Pasadena Post, March 16, 1929, 25.

19. “Questions and Answers,” The Sporting News, September 8, 1932, 4.

20. “Files Protest on Moist Ball,” San Bernardino County (California) Sun, May 4, 1934, 20.

21. In the Negro Leagues, the spitball came to prominence just as the white leagues were moving to ban the pitch, and would tolerate it on at least a limited basis nearly as long as they continued to function. Left-hander John “Neck” Stanley pitched until 1948, mostly with the New York Black Yankees; Wendell Smith wrote that after two decades in baseball, Stanley was “permitted to throw the spitball” by virtue of his long service. (Wendell Smith, “The Sports Beat,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 15, 1947, 16.) A similar case involved Bill Byrd, longtime ace of the Baltimore Elite Giants. Only when Byrd was released in 1950 could Sam Lacy report the “departure … of the last colored spitball pitcher.” (Sam Lacy, “From A to Z,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 1, 1950, 17.)

22. “Hutchinson Jolts Cards’ Effort to Get Grimes,” Springfield (Missouri) Leader and Press, February 21, 1935, 6.

23. “Bearwald Declares Grimes Not Due as Star for Missions,” Marysville (California) Appeal-Democrat, March 2, 1935, 1.

24. Joe Niese, Burleigh Grimes: Baseball’s Last Legal Spitballer (The History Press, 2014), 178.

25. “Branch Rickey Starts Fight for Columbus,” Minneapolis Star, April 4, 1931, 19.

26. Charles Johnson, “The Lowdown on Sports,” Minneapolis Star, April 6, 1931, 13.

27. C.E. McBride, “Branch Rickey Fails in Attempt to Land Doak in A.A.,” Kansas City Star, April 25, 1931, 5.

28. “Jack Quinn, Johnstown Manager, Seeks to Use Spitball; Owners in Mid-Atlantic to Vote,” Uniontown (Pennsylvania) Morning Herald, July 17, 1935, 10.

29. “Jawns Call on Jack Quinn to Halt Greylegs as They Turn In 18 to 0 Triumph,” Zanesville (Ohio) Times Recorder, July 31, 1935, 6.

30. “Lefty Heise, Veteran Hurler, May Sign With Local Club,” Zanesville (Ohio) Signal, July 31, 1935, 8.

31. “Tragedy of Clarence Mitchell,” The Sporting News, February 16, 1933, 4.

32. “Reprieve for Mitchell,” The Sporting News, March 23, 1933, 4.

33. “Spitball Chucker to Hoods,” Omaha World-Herald, April 16, 1936, 17.

34. “Owners Give Mitchell O.K.,” Omaha World-Herald, April 29, 1936, 29.

35. “Mitchell to Hurl 1307th Tilt Wednesday,” Paducah (Kentucky) Sun-Democrat, June 13, 1937, 12.

36. “Mitchell Heads Baseball Sport in Broken Bow,” Custer County Chief (Broken Bow, Nebraska), April 28, 1938, 3; and “Lexington Plays Broken Bow Here Sunday, in League Season Opener,” Custer County Chief, May 4, 1939, 3.

37. “Spit Ball Veteran Piloting Meridian,” Anniston (Alabama) Star, February 16, 1940, 10.

38. Stuart X. Stephenson, “Southeastern Prexy Predicts Close Race in Loop,” Montgomery Advertiser, April 25, 1940, 15.

39. “Spit Ball Veteran Piloting Meridian.”

40. The name Mitchell soon began cropping up in box scores and word spread around the league that the Meridian Bears’ 49-year-old manager was chasing fly balls in the outfield. In fact, the Mitchell in the outfield was 25-year-old Joe Bob Mitchell, a former multi-sport star at Auburn University. (Bill Wise, “Wise and Otherwise,” Selma Times-Journal, May 12, 1940, 6. “Four Letters?” Dothan (Alabama) Eagle, May 1, 1936, 8.)

41. “Rams Outlast Scrappers in 11-Inning Game,” Anniston Star, May 10, 1940, 10.

42. “Meridian Manager Released, Jackson Bows to Gadsden,” Sun Herald (Biloxi, Mississippi), May 17, 1940, 6.

43. “Clarence Mitchell’s Son Lasts One Game,” Miami (Oklahoma) News-Record, August 13, 1942, 4.

44. “Snipe” Conley gained his nickname when, during spring training, some practical jokers dropped him several miles from camp overnight with a bag and a lamp in an effort to catch a small, elusive (and fictitious) woodland creature. (C. Starr Matthews, “When Mack Made Boot,” Baltimore Sun, August 15, 1914, 8).

45. “Manager Essler Begins to Weed Out Team Candidates,” Reading (Pennsylvania) Times, May 9, 1913, 8.

46. “Bloomer Girls Keep City Leaguers Busy to Win,” Reading Times, June 7, 1913, 10.

47. Debra A. Shattuck, Bloomer Girls: Women Baseball Pioneers (University of Illinois Press, 2017), 168.

48. C. Starr Matthews, “When Mack Made Boot,” Baltimore Sun, August 15, 1914, 8.

49. Tom Swope, “Reds Land Four Promising Pitchers Via Draft Route,” Cincinnati Post, September 21, 1917, 8.

50. “Conley Back to Dallas,” Cincinnati Post, May 16, 1918, 11.

51. Sam Kindrick, “Boom That Made Texon Leaves it Dying in Sun,” San Angelo (Texas) Standard-Times, July 10, 1958, 11.

52. Wayne K. Otto, “Darkness Stops Big Scoreless Pitchers’ Battle,” Galveston Daily News, May 12, 1919, 4.

53. Bob Pigue, “Bars Up Against Spitball Hurlers,” News Scimitar (Memphis, Tennessee), December 17, 1919, 18.

54. “Doak Roberts Would Be Fair,” The Sporting News, January 13, 1921, 3.

55. Bill O’Neal, The Texas League, 1888–1987: A Century of Baseball (Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1987), 60.

56. Billy Bee, “Second Twin Bill Threatens to Cause Break,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, August 6, 1923, 10.

57. “Spitball Expert Snipe Conley Back in Dallas as Oldest Rookie,” Big Spring (Texas) Daily Herald, June 11, 1941, 6.

58. “Limit on Spitballers Will Not Work Hardship in League,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, October 29, 1926, 16.

59. “Devolution,” The Sporting News, July 23, 1925, 4.

60. “When a Game Isn’t a Game,” The Sporting News, November 12, 1925, 4.

61. “Rules Are Standard,” The Sporting News, December 4, 1924, 4.

62. O’Neal, The Texas League, 47.

63. “Hattiesburg Wins First Half Honors in Cotton States Loop,” Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi), June 23, 1928, 8.

64. “Jackson Club Gets Biggest Shake-Up in its Entire History,” Clarion-Ledger, July 3, 1928, 10.

65. “Texon Oilers Slated to Be Strong Again,” San Angelo Standard-Times, March 17, 1929, 16.

66. “Spitball Expert Snipe Conley Back in Dallas as Oldest Rookie.”

67. “Snipe Conley, 47, Returning as Mound ‘Rookie’ for Dallas,” The Sporting News, June 19, 1941, 6.

68. Harold V. Ratliff, “It Was Tough at Finish Bu Old Sniper Made It,” Austin American-Statesman, June 26, 1941, 15.

69. Spink, “Three and One,” The Sporting News, August 7, 1941, 4.

70. Faber and Faber, 5 and 11.

71. “Cuban Pitcher Starts Well,” News Scimitar, July 20, 1920, 13.

72. Floyd Aten Jr., “Introducing the Governors,” Tyler (Texas) Courier-Times, June 3, 1934, 10.

73. Wade Ison, “’Bama Pitts Hits Four; Spins Split,” Charlotte (North Carolina) News, July 1, 1937, 17.

74. Swope, “Contract Signed by Benton,” Cincinnati Post, March 18, 1933, 12.

75. Ratliff, “Snipe Conley Having Trouble in Comeback But He Doesn’t Lose in Second Time Out,” Corpus Christi Times, July 28, 1941, 8.

76. “The Box Score,” Shreveport Times, July 2, 1941, 18; and July 6, 1941, 19.

77. Joe R. Carter, “Raspberries and Cream,” Shreveport Times, July 6, 1941, 19.

78. “Spitball Expert Snipe Conley Back in Dallas as Oldest Rookie.”

79. Spink, “Three and One,” 4.

80. Carter, “Spitball Hurlers Meet Today,” Shreveport Times, July 27, 1941, 19.

81. “Rebs Tee Off on Tuero in First Inning,” Shreveport Times, July 28, 1941, 11.

82. Flem R. Hall, “The Sport Tide,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, July 31, 1941, 20.

83. “Oscar Tuero to Take Mound for Marshall Club,” Shreveport Times, August 30, 1941, 15.

84. Bill Van Fleet, “Hunter’s Catching for Louisiana ‘9,’” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, July 25, 1958, 13.

85. “Solis Sets Down Rangers, 10­–2,” Corpus Christi Caller-Times, June 23, 1958, 13.