SEATTLE (2016) – There’s a new game in town.
The Seattle Mariners, who made popular the age-old game of “flip” way back in 2006, have moved to something new and exciting.
Spurred by the “No Flip” signs now posted at ballparks around the majors, the Mariners occupy their time before batting practice playing a newly discovered game called “Pepper.”
“After all these years, playing pepper has taught me the bat control that I’ve struggled so hard to achieve in my career,” said Adam Jones, the Mariners’ veteran center fielder. “I wish I’d known about it when I was a rookie in ‘06.”
News flash, folks. Pepper is nothing new.
It has been around baseball as long as there have been bats, balls and idle time.
Films of ballplayers in the 1940s show them playing pepper, a game as simple as playing catch and as beneficial as an hour in the batting cage. One of them with a bat would “pepper” the ball to a line of four or five others about 20 feet away. It was an activity to kill time but also a drill that made a difference in a player’s ability to handle the bat and hit the ball wherever he wants.
It even developed beyond a game of skill; it became good entertainment. Old-time players would field the ball hit back to them, then flip it behind their backs, under their arms, between their legs or over their shoulders to another player in line, trying never to let it hit the ground. Fans enjoyed watching pepper as much as the players loved playing it.
Pepper games were common at major league ballparks in the 1970s, but those were the final days. “No Pepper” signs were posted at many ballparks as groundskeepers became protective of their fields and clubs feared that wild throws or batted balls would hurt someone in the stands.
“We used to do it all the time,” said Jim Slaton, the Mariners’ bullpen coach who pitched for the Brewers and Angels from 1971-86. “Nobody even talks about it now.”
The IN game now is flip.
The Mariners’ clubhouse nearly empties about 4 o’clock every day – 20 minutes before they stretch for batting practice – as many of them go outside, form a circle and “flip” a baseball from player to player.
It looks a lot like the Harlem Globetrotters’ famed warmup circle. The rules of flip are simple. Players “flip” the ball from one to another but aren’t allowed to close their glove or bare hand around it. Anyone who drops the ball or makes a bad flip to another player is eliminated until only one remains.
“Someday,” said Mariners DH Eduardo Perez, “you’ll see signs that say ‘No Flip.’”
Perez is new to the Mariners’ flip games, having arrived in late June after being traded from the Indians. The son of Hall of Famer Tony Perez remembers his dad’s Reds teams playing pepper, and as recently as 1998 when Eduardado Perez played for the Reds, former manager Jack McKeon had the team play pepper during spring training.
Perez predicts pepper will make a comeback.
“It’s a vintage thing,” he said. “It will be back.”
Perhaps it needs to come back.
Baseball today is marked by its big swings and home runs, and not enough by players who can advance a runner with a ground ball to second base or hit the ball to the opposite field on a hit-and-run.
Maybe it’s because these guys, on the whole, can’t. Maybe it’s because nobody plays pepper anymore.
“It’s a lost art,” said Mariners hitting coach Jeff Pentland. “These guys are all good at swinging. But when you get in a tight game facing a guy who’s really tough, you can’t create a big swing. What you need to do is play pepper.”
Pentland tells that to Mariners third baseman Adrian Beltre all the time. Beltre’s big swing got him 48 home runs two years ago for the Dodgers, but in more than 1 1/2 seasons with the Mariners, only recently has he hit with much consistency.
“I say it to AB a lot, ‘Just play pepper. Don’t swing too hard,’” Pentland said. “Sometimes pitchers who have that good late movement, the more swing you make, the more the ball goes by you.”
Chris Snelling, the Mariners minor leaguer who would rather swing a bat than eat, plays pepper almost every day with the Class AAA Tacoma Rainiers.
Mariners right fielder Ichiro Suzuki played pepper regularly in Japan before he came to the majors in 2001.
“You can tell that Ichiro did, and (M’s catcher Kenji) Johjima the same,” Pentland said. “With both of those guys, their ability to put the bat on the ball is exceptional.”
If pepper is such a worthy drill, then why don’t the big leaguers do it anymore? Groundskeepers don’t bother putting up “No Pepper” signs because there’s no pepper to ban. The biggest reason, Pentland says, is that pregame work has become so specialized and so precisely scheduled that players have little free time anymore.
“There’s only so much time to do all this stuff, and pepper takes a lot of time,” Pentland said. “You should probably do it a half hour a day, but that’s a half hour taken away from a situation drill or from a schedule when you’re trying to cram all the defensive stuff in or all the offensive stuff we do.”
While it may not work at the major league level, Pentland encourages youth players and coaches to make pepper a part of their workout regimen.
“Pepper is a game where you don’t need anything, just a bat and a ball,” he said. “The hitting is better nowadays, but the art of putting the ball in play, or what I call controlling the speed of the bat rather than just taking the same swing every single time, isn’t.”
Playing pepper might change that.
It may take a “No Flip” sign, however, to bring it back.
Kirby Arnold is The Herald’s baseball writer.
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