Wild Pitch
Coach Chester Holbrook Brown ~ 1900
Since mechanized aids were practically nonexistent in 1907, it is not surprising that members of the baseball squad would always remember that season as the year of the infamous pitching machine.
“Aquiver with excitement, we placed the machine in position, stationed our lead-off man at the plate, pumped the pump to its fullest capacity, and pulled the trigger. The result was not what we had expected. There was a loud Poof!, a kind of stage-whispered explosion. The batter leaped fully three feet out of his box, and the catcher, seeing the ball come speeding toward him as if impelled by Walter Johnson, decided to step over to the bench for a drink of water and let the backstop do the work. We caught him finally, quieted him with reassuring words, and led him back to his position. We put up another batter (the first was still trembling violently) lowered the pressure in the gauge, and tried again. The result was the same, except that, in this case, the catcher, probably through sheer inability to move, held his ground.
“This then was the weakness of the machine. The speed we could easily regulate, but we could do nothing with the sudden and explosive Poof!, which seemed to shake every batter to his very marrow. We tried signaling with a handkerchief as we were about to shoot; we had one of the regular pitchers stand on the mound and go through his motion in pantomime, timing our delivery with the swing of his arm. Neither of these strategies seemed to help. Even when the team had become so inured to the ordeal as to be able to keep both feet on the ground, there was always a slight, involuntary start which threw them off their swing. After a week of vain endeavor, we finally gave it up. We learned later that the Boston National League team and the Yale Varsity had suffered the same experience. This comforted us a little, but not much. There was always a haunting conviction that the thing ought to have worked.”
