Leslie Mann Baseball Lantern Slide, No. 111

Item Information

Title:
Leslie Mann Baseball Lantern Slide, No. 111
Description:
Rogers Hornsby, a first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals, is in a full squat position and rests his right forearm above his thigh . His right hand is between his legs hidden underneath his glove which is pointing downward. Hornsby holds the number 2 out with his fingers underneath his glove. There is a player in the dugout to the left side of Hornsby.
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
Gloves
Hornsby, Rogers
St. Louis Cardinals
Catching
Catching Stance
Catching Signals
Link to Item:
https://cdm16122.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16122coll10/id/13
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:
Hornsby demonstrates how to give a sign to your pitcher without letting anyone see the signal you are giving. Hornsby has his glove over his fingers, protecting the signal from being seen by the hitter, and also uses his legs to block the signal from either side of the field. Anyone in a dugout or any coach trying to see the sign would have to be in a perfect position where Hornsby's legs and glove weren't blocking the sign. In the picture, Hornsby holds two fingers which are pointed downward under his glove. Based on Leslie Mann's baseball introduction course which states that two fingers means the catcher wants the pitcher to throw a curveball, Hornsby is informing the pitcher to throw him a curveball. The picture demonstrates the importance of a relationship between the pitcher and the catcher, because their communication leads to a confident and more successful pitcher, which leads to a more successful team and increases their chances to win.
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.
I used facial recognition to identify the player in slide 111 as Rogers Hornsby.
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-111-03
111