My inquisitive mind wondered why. Here’s what I found.
The other day, I went with two friends to see the A’s play in their minor league park in Sacramento. For the last two innings, we snuck from our seats down the left-field line to great seats closer to the field, just to the right of home plate. As I gazed out onto the field, my eyes fell upon the pitcher’s mound.
I wondered….
Why does baseball have a pitcher’s mound? Was there always a pitcher’s mound? How would pitchers fare if there were no mound?
Graphic courtesy The Pecan Park Eagle
Well, there was no mound in the earliest days of the game. Pitchers merely lobbed the ball underhand. There were no balls and strikes either. The focus was on the batter hitting the ball. A pitcher would throw as many pitches as needed until the batter struck the ball.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the front of the pitching area was 45 feet from home plate, and the pitcher could not cross over the line. But pitchers began looking for ways to gain an advantage over the hitter, including taking a running start, much like the bowler in a cricket match.
So, in 1864, a pitching box was employed to limit the pitchers’ freedom–a three-by-twelve-foot box that prevented pitchers from taking a running start. In addition, they were also required to pitch with both feet on the ground.
Did those actions help? Well, pitchers found new ways to gain an edge, putting movement on the ball and changing speeds to throw off the batters’ timing. New rules were imposed on the game.
1881: The front of the pitching box was moved back to 50 feet instead of 45.
1884: Pitchers were allowed to throw overhand.
1887: The distance was further extended to 55 feet, 6 inches.
1893: The box was replaced with a raised mound and a rubber slab 12 inches long and relocated further back to 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate. Pitchers had to touch the rubber with their back foot.
The purpose? Baseball officials were trying to achieve a balance between the hitter and the pitcher. Increasing the pitching distance helped the batter, while instituting a raised mound helped pitchers, as it allowed them to gain momentum as they pitched downhill, adding velocity to their throws and making it more difficult for batters to square up.
The extra five feet was significant, as it reduced the angle of the pitches, and the league batting average increased by 35 points in 1893 and another 29 points in 1894.
Between 1893 and 1950, the only rule regarding the height of the pitching mound was that the top could be no more than 15 inches above the playing field. Teams used this loose rule to their advantage, changing the height of the mound to play to the home team’s pitching strengths or to throw off pitchers from visiting teams. For example, as Arthur Dailey wrote, “As a means of utilizing to the full the blinding side-arm speed of Walter Johnson, Washington leveled off the ‘mound’ so completely that it was almost a depression instead of an elevation.”
Bill Veeck, while general manager of the Cleveland Indians, had Emil Bossard, “the Michelangelo of grounds keepers,” custom craft the Indians’ mound to the preferences of the pitcher of the day. Veeck wrote, “Bob Feller always liked to pitch from a mountaintop, so that he could come down with that great leverage of his and stuff the ball down the batter’s throat.”
These adjustments were legal prior to 1950, when MLB made a rule that all mounds be exactly 15 inches above playing field level. Groundskeepers could still tinker with the contours of the mound. But with the growing use of relief pitchers, a mound customized for the starter did not always suit the home team’s subsequent hurlers.
Ryne Duren, a relief pitcher for the Yankees, said, “Bob Turley wanted the mound at Yankee Stadium to be flat, and since he was the top gun of the staff in 1958, the groundskeepers kept it that way. I preferred it to be sloped. One day I threw my first pitch and my foot hit the ground and I thought my knee was going to hit me in the chin.”
The great Bob Gibson (photo courtesy Cooperstown Cred)
Combined with a 1963 rule change that expanded the strike zone, pitchers began to dominate hitters in the extreme. 1968 is referred to as “The Year of the Pitcher” because the average run scoring per game per team that year was merely 3.42, with 21 percent of the games ending in one of the teams getting shut out. Bob Gibson recorded a minuscule ERA of 1.12, and Denny McLean won 31 games.
In response, in 1969, MLB attempted to shift the balance in favor of the hitters by lowering the mound 5 inches to a height of 10 inches. MLB also restored the smaller strike zone that was the standard before 1963. It worked; in 1969, the average run scoring per game jumped to 4.07 and then to 4.34 in 1970.
MLB has made no further adjustments to the mound height since 1969. However, there were discussions about adjusting the pitching distance to address the increasing strikeout rates. In 2021, an experiment was conducted in the independent Atlantic League, where the distance was increased to 61 feet, 6 inches, to see if it could restore the balance between pitchers and batters.
The experiment was discontinued after that year. According to ESPN, “The 61-foot, 6-inch distance to the mound appears dead. Neither the data nor feedback from players or coaches in the Atlantic League last season suggests the extra foot had much effect.”
I, for one, am glad to hear it. Adjusting the height of the mound is one thing. Changing the pitching distance, which has been the same since 1893, would offend me almost as much as the automatic runner at second base in extra innings.
