Leslie Mann Baseball Lantern Slide, No. 136

Item Information

Title:
Leslie Mann Baseball Lantern Slide, No. 136
Description:
Bill Doak, a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, attempts to hold a baseball in the proper position in order to catch a curveball. Doak crunches all four of his fingers together on the baseball side by side from one another while his thumb is held in the air not touching the baseball.
Creator:
Mann, Leslie
Date:
1920–1925
Format:
Photographs
Location:
Springfield College Archives and Special Collections
Collection (local):
Leslie Mann Baseball Lantern Slide Collection
Subjects:
Baseball
Baseball caps
Baseballs
Doak, William Leopold
St. Louis Cardinals
Pitching
Pitching--Curveball
Link to Item:
https://cdm16122.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16122coll10/id/6
Terms of Use:
Rights status not evaluated.
This work is licensed for use under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License (CC BY-NC-SA).
CC BY-NC-SA icon
Publisher:
Springfield College
Language:
English
Notes:
Bill Doak demonstrates the improper way to hold a baseball when pitching a curveball. As Leslie Mann describes in his baseball instruction course, the way you hold the baseball when pitching a curveball is the same way you should hold a baseball when pitching a fastball. However, in this image, Doak isn't holding the ball in the same way he would be holding a fastball. If he was, only his index and middle finger would be over the seams of the ball, and his fingers would be spread apart. A curveball is able to rotate differently than a fastball because of the way the ball leaves your hand and the jerk of the wrist that occurs. It doesn't have anything to do with the location of your fingers on the ball, so Doak changing the way he is holding the ball because he wants to pitch a curveball would be a mistake. Doak also doesn't spread his fingers apart in the photo, meaning he will have a harder time controlling the ball. If Doak was holding the ball the right way, his index finger and middle finger would be over as much of the seams of the ball as possible and these fingers would be spread apart. Doak would change the way the ball leaves his hand in order to throw a curveball. It is actually still possible for Doak to throw a curveball from this position, but if he did, the batter would be able to tell that the pitcher was throwing a curve ball and could prepare for it. Holding the baseball in the same position as you would when holding a fastball increases the unpredictability of the pitch as the batter won't know whether the pitcher is attempting to throw a fastball or a curveball.
William Leopold Doak was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on January 28, 1891. Doak was a very honest and moral man who taught a Sunday school class. Doak played for the Cincinnati Reds, St. Louis Cardinals, and the Brooklyn Robins during his career. However, he mainly played for the St. Louis Cardinals. In 1914, while on the Cardinals, one of his coaches suggested Doak try the spitball, and Doak became one of the top pitchers in the league after beginning to use the spitball. Doak would actually become known as Spittin' Bill Doak because of this. When the pitch was outlawed in 1920, Doak was one of 17 pitchers who was allowed to continue throwing the spitball until their career was over. Doak has the second most shutouts thrown in Cardinals history with 32, only trailing Bob Gibson. Doak also helped design baseball gloves, suggesting a web be placed between the first finger and thumb to create a natural pocket. These gloves that Doak suggested were revolutionary and are still used in baseball today. After retiring, Doak moved to Florida where he opened a candy shop and coached baseball for a high school in Florida.
I used facial recognition to identify the player in slide 136 as Bill Doak.
Good condition;
The digital image is made from two separate digital scans; one scan of the lantern slide (reflective); one scan of the image (transparency); the two images were then combined in Photoshop to create the final image
Lantern slide from the Leslie Mann baseball instruction course, "The Fundamentals of Baseball"
Steinberg, Steve. "Bill Doak." Society for American Baseball Research, [ https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/1359e4e2 ]. Accessed 24 Oct. 2017. ____Internet Archive____. [ https://web.archive.org/web/20171024171207/https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/1359e4e2 ].
Identifier:
LANT-BSBL-136-03
136