George Brett's Pine Tar Incident: Baseball's Controversial Moment

On July twenty fourth, nineteen eighty three, Kansas City Royal's third baseman, George Brett, had just hit a home run to give his team the lead versus the New York Yankees, but shortly after he passed home plate, the umpire looked at his bat, pointed to the dugout and called him out due to issues with too much pine tar being on his bat from an obscure rule from back in the day. Brett loses his mind and rushes onto the field and is held back as he is tossed from the game. But the game is over yet, as it would go on weeks later to be finished officially. Here's the story behind this iconic and crazy event in baseball history today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reees, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day, and today's trivia question to listen out for is how many days did it take for them to finish the game in the Kansas City Royals in the New York Yankees where George Brett got thrown out due to his pine tar. So before we dive into this iconic moment, let's get into the man behind this, George Brett. He was born in Virginia, the youngest of four sons, and his brother Ken was also a pitcher in the major leagues and pitched in the nineteen sixty seven World Series just at the age of nineteen. And his two other brothers actually had baseball careers too, but only made it to the miners. So he was born into baseball and was gifted the talent that him and his brothers were also gifted for baseball, and when he graduated high school in nineteen seventy one, he was selected by the Kansas City Royals in the second round of the Major League Baseball Draft. And at the time he was drafted, he was actually a shortstop and he had issues while in the minor leagues going to his right, So since he had issues going to his right, they put him somewhere where he wouldn't have to do that that much. They put him at third base. He had a strong enough armed to make the throw from third base to first quick enough, and he didn't have to go to his right because there was the foul line. So it was a great change for him, and he continued to hit on the field, but his hitting was always something that stood out, and in nineteen seventy three, he finally got the call up to the Kansas City Royals to make his debut on August second, nineteen seventy three, going against the Chicago White Sox as their starting third baseman. He would only play thirteen games in that season and would get to the starting job in nineteen seventy four. Though he struggled at the plate, he eventually caught on and by his second season he was hitting over three hundred for the season, and in nineteen seventy six he made his first All Star Game, which he did so for thirteen straight seasons. But his best season came in nineteen eighty when he was named the Al MVP, batting three ninety, which was a record for modern third basemen at the time, and he almost was able to hit over four hundred to become the first person to do so since Ted william in nineteen forty one. He had a little bit of a slump towards the end of the season that left him at three ninety, and despite this great hitting, he was only second that year, and that was the highest batt average since nineteen forty one, when Ted Williams hit over four hundred, and he was later surpassed by Tony Gwynn in nineteen ninety four, although Tony played less games and had less at bets. But at this time, the Kansas City Royals were consistently a great team in the American League, and they developed a rivalry with the Yankees as they swept them in the playoffs in nineteen seventy six, seventy seven, and seventy eight, and they would make it to the World Series in nineteen eighty but which they sadly lost in six games. But during the series, Brett actually became a household name as he had to leave the second game in the sixth inning due to hemorrhoid pains and had to have minor surgery the next day, but he would return in Game three and hit a home run, which is often forgot about as he's only remembered as having hemorrhoids. But in nineteen eighty one, he starts to show his anger as he hits a media photographer for taking a picture of him after a loss with a crutch, and a few weeks later he destroyed two toilets at the Mets Stadium, and later on that year he had to be restrained by teammates for being questioned by a reporter while out at hotel. So we get to nineteen eighty three, and at this point, both the Yankees and the Kansas City Royals are in the hunt to make the playoffs chance to try to make the World Series, and they had already started their rivalry a few years earlier, as they were constantly buying to win the Al Pennant every year, being the two of the top two teams. So on July twenty fourth, nineteen eighty three, in New York at Yankee Stadium, with almost thirty four thousand people in attendance, the Royals and the Yankees put on a show with a close matchup going back and forth the entire game, and in the top of the ninth with the Royals trailing four to three, George Brett came up to bat and the Yankees called in their closes Richard Goosig, and after filing off his first pitch, he hit a two run home run over the right field fence, giving the Royals the lead in the ninth inning five to four, and Brett was ecstatic as one would be who just took the lead off a home run and trotted across the base paths with joy and a smile on his face. But Yankee manager Billy Martin approached the home play umpire Tim mcleland and requested to examine Brett's bats. See before the game, Martin and other members of the Yankees noticed that Brett had excessive pine tar on his bats. Now, pine tar is a very sticky substance that's often brownish blackish that players would put on their bats to help with grip. As a bat is usually has some shine to it, and when it's hot out and sweaty out, your hands can get sweaty. You can lose a grip on it. And pine tar was used by multiple players, but there was a rule that you couldn't have the pine tar more than eighteen inches above the handle of the bat, a very obscure rule that was rarely ever used, but it was in the rule book, so even though they noticed this, they wanted to wait till a point within the game where they made need to use it. And as all the umpires examined the bats and even laid it across home plate, which is seventeen inches, which gives them a rough estimate of how high the pine tar is on the bat and when they saw that it was clearly above the eighteen inches, the homeplate umpire found Brett and the dugout pointed at him and called him out and reset the game to being four to three. Now, obviously this would enraged any of us, as we had just been called out, not knowing what just happened, feeling like there was some sort of qs. He was just talking to the Yankees manager. So he runs out, furious, being held by as many teammates as can catch him, yelling at the umpire with ferociousness, coming at him with all his will. Now Brett was thrown out of the game because of this, obviously, but after they were able to take Brett out of the field and then back into the dugout, the game was able to resume with the Yankees winning four to three. Now, the Royals protested this game, and four days later the American League president Lee MacPhail upheld the protests and explained his decision that it wasn't the spirit of the rule. See, this rule was obscure and had not been used in years, mainly because back in the day when they first made the rule, pine tar was expensive and they wanted to limit the use of pine tar so that to not give an advantage to someone else, not because it gave an advantage on the actual field, not that it actually gave an advantage having it higher up on the bat at any point. And the higher they had it up on the bet, the more it would get on the balls, and the more the teams would have to pay more, the more the home team would have to pay to supply more balls, as it could ruin a ball. So thus they restored Brett's home run and stated that they had to resume the game at the time of Brett's home run. However, his ejection from his outburst would still stand and so Brett could not finish the game. But then after this decision, the Yankees filed a decision saying that Brett did not touch every single base, which meant he would have been rolled out anyway, But they could not verify this claim and so their dispute was not upheld. And again the Yankees tried to charge ticket holders for this half an inning left in the game to come see it, even if they had a ticket to that game, and this produced lawsuits in the Bronx Supreme Court that were still going on at the date, they had scheduled the game for August eighteenth, nineteen eighty three, which was twenty five days since the original game. But by the time the game had started, they gave anyone that had a ticket to the first game free injury into that game, and the game started with two outs at the top of the ninth with the Royals leading five to four, with only about twelve hundred fans in attendance, And even as the game started, Yankees manager Billy Martin went onto the field into protests that's saying he did not touch first base, second base, third base, or even home and each umpire had to say he was safe, he was safe, he was safe, as they tried everything to get this win to no avail, as the Royals went on to win the game twenty five days after it first started, and at this point it put the Yankees in fifth place and basically out of postseason contention. Now, after all of this happened, they actually changed the rules to all this that if you have an objection about someone's bet or equipment, you had to make an objection before they started their at bat, not after, which is probably what it should have been in the first place, but usually rules are created after something happens and things get changed afterwards. It happens in in every sport because you don't know what might happen, and normally this is not an issue, but it does happen on rare occasions. As for George Brett, after this, he was regretful for his outburst, but he was actually happy as he now is known as the pine tar Guy instead of the hemorrhoid guy from when he played in the World Series, which he gladly takes. And he went on to continue his great career where he got his number five retired by the Kansas City Royals and became inducted and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on his first ballot in nineteen ninety nine and was a Kansas City Royal for life, and he finished his career second in the Major League history. He finished his career with the most hits by a third basement in Major League history, which was later passed by Adrian Beltre, and is constantly mentioned as one of the best third basemen to ever play the game, even though now he's mostly remembered for being the pine Tar Guy. But it's a memory he will gladly take, as he says he didn't know about the rule, He just liked the bat and used pine tar throughout his career, but he'll gladly take being known as the pine Tar Guy. I want to thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History. If you like this topic, please leave us a rating or review wherever you're listening. If you like this topic and want us to cover a topic that you enjoy, please leave us a review wherever you're listening and tell us that, tell us what you want us to cover, and your name, and we would gladly do that just for you, and come back tomorrow for more Daily Sports History. And did you catch the answer to today's trivia question? How many days did it take for the Royals and Yankees to finish their pine Tar game from the win it began to when it unofficially ended. The answer was twenty five days.