Leslie Mann Baseball Lantern Slide, No. 114

Item Information

Title:
Leslie Mann Baseball Lantern Slide, No. 114
Description:
Rogers Hornsby, a first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals, squats in front of a dugout as two people sit in the stands directly behind the dugout. Hornsby holds his glove inward towards his left side as he holds up three fingers behind his glove.
Creator:
Mann, Leslie
Creator:
Erker Bros. Optical Co., St. Louis Mo.,
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
Hornsby, Rogers
St. Louis Cardinals
Catching
Catching Stance
Catching signals
Link to Item:
https://cdm16122.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16122coll10/id/12
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, a first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals, demonstrates how to be an effective catcher. Hornsby squats in the position of a catcher, and holds up a signal for his pitcher as to what pitch he wants him to throw. However, he uses his glove to block the sign from opposing coaches, since these coaches would be able to warn their players about the pitch before it comes. The sign is also hidden by Hornsby's legs, so a player or coach would have to be in perfect position in order to see what sign Hornsby was giving to his pitcher. Hornsby is demonstrating a way here to block a catching sign correctly without having to point the glove downward and hiding the signal underneath the glove. Hornsby holds up the number 3, which based on Leslie Mann's baseball instruction course, means Hornsby wants his pitcher to throw a slow ball.
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 114 as Verne Clemons on page 27 of his manual titled the Fundamentals of Baseball. However, I believe this is an error because the player does not look like Clemons at all and looks a lot more like Rogers Hornsby. There are a lot more pictures of Hornsby because of how famous he was so I am confident in this assumption.
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-114-03
114