Baseball innovator Elmer Stricklett is widely credited with introducing the unpredictable spitball pitch to the Major Leagues on May 29, 1905. The pitch was so erratically dominant that baseball executives banned it before the 1920 season to clean up the game and boost offense. In a rare gesture of fairness, the league created a grandfather clause allowing seventeen active pitchers—including future Hall of Famer Burleigh Grimes—to keep using it until the last practitioner retired in 1934.
