Leslie Mann Baseball Lantern Slide, No. 117

Item Information

Title:
Leslie Mann Baseball Lantern Slide, No. 117
Description:
Rogers Hornsby, a first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals, squats while holding a glove out in front of the middle of his body. Hornsby has turned his glove inward towards the left side of his body as he holds up the number 2 with his right hand. The glove blocks the signal from one side, but is clearly visible from the other.
Creator:
Mann, Leslie
Creator:
E.W. Goodrich (Tremont Temple, Boston)
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
Rogers Hornsby
St. Louis Cardinals
Catching
Catching Stance
Catching Signals
Link to Item:
https://cdm16122.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16122coll10/id/11
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:
Rogers Hornsby demonstrates an incorrect stance that catchers should follow when attempting to give a signal to the pitcher about what type of pitch to throw. First off, Hornsby only blocks the signal from one side, meaning that the signal he is giving would be clearly visible on the other side of the field. Secondly, Hornsby has brought his glove and hand too far forward. Hornsby should move his hand and glove backward so that it is blocked better by his legs than it is in the slide here. This will increase the chances that his signal to the pitcher will not be seen by any other players on the field.
Rogers Hornsby was born on April 27, 1896 in Winters, Texas. He played for the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Giants, Boston Braves, and the St. Louis Browns during his career, but he spent most of his years as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals. He is considered one of the greatest hitters of all time, and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1942. Hornsby has the second highest career batting average in MLB history behind only Ty Cobb, with a lifetime batting average of .358. He led the national league in batting seven times in his career. After retiring, Hornsby was a manager. One of the craziest facts about Hornsby is that he wasn't that good at baseball when he first started playing in the major leagues. He was skinny during his first season, and hit .246. His manager told Hornsby he was a little light, but he had the talent and said he was going to farm him out for a year. What he meant by this was he would send Hornsby to the Minor Leagues for a year to help him develop his baseball skills. However, Hornsby took this saying of farm out literally, and he spent the winter on his Uncle's farm. He gained 30 pounds of muscle and then became one of, if not, the greatest hitter in major league history. Hornsby was a very confident man who wasn't afraid to speak his mind, as he even called his manager a "boob" and his teammates "pigeons". Because of this, he often didn't get along with his teammates or coaches. Overall, though Hornsby may have been a difficult person to be friends with, he was one of the greatest baseball players of all time.
Leslie Mann identifies the player in slide 117 as Verne Clemons on page 28 of his manual titled the Fundamentals of Baseball. However, I do not believe that this is the correct player as the player pictured looks nothing like Clemons and a lot like Rogers Hornsby, There are errors in the manual in terms of spelling names correctly and other things so I think that my assumption here is very plausible.
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"
1. "Rogers Hornsby."National Baseball Hall of Fame, [https://baseballhall.org/hof/hornsby-rogers]. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017]. _Internet Archive_. [https://web.archive.org/web/20171005174129/https://baseballhall.org/hof/hornsby-rogers]. 2. Paul Rogers III, C. "Rogers Hornsby." Society for American Baseball Research, edited by Gregory H. Wolf, [https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/b5854fe4]. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017. _Internet Archive_. [https://web.archive.org/web/20171005172551/https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/b5854fe4].
Identifier:
LANT-BSBL-117-03
117