Leslie Mann Baseball Lantern Slide, No. 90

Item Information

Title:
Leslie Mann Baseball Lantern Slide, No. 90
Description:
Jack Smith, an outfielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, lays on the ground with his right hand touching the edge of a base. His legs are behind him as he gazes forward. Del Gainer, a first baseman for the Cardinals, stands behind the base. His right foot is directly behind the base while his left foot is behind the base but to the left side of it. Gainer's body is turned away, but he is turning his head as he stares directly at the camera.
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
Baseball fields
Smith, Jack
Gainer, Dellas Clinton
St. Louis Cardinals
Sliding
Fielding
Link to Item:
https://cdm16122.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16122coll10/id/243
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:
Smith is demonstrating a rare type of slide that only a few players choose to use. This slide is called the arm hook slide. It is similar to the hook slide, where the baserunner hooks one of their legs around one side of the base. However, in this instance, Smith would slide head first and instead hook his arm around the base. Here, Smith hooks his right arm around the right side of the base. The baserunner will do this in an attempt to avoid a tag by the baseman covering the base. In general, the baseman will have his glove around the middle of the base, so Smith would hook his arm around the base in order to avoid that tag and touch the base before the baserunner could tag him out.
Jack Smith was born June 23, 1895 in Chicago, Illinois. Smith played for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Boston Braves during his career, spending the majority of his time playing for the Cardinals. Smith was a left handed outfielder during his career. He was not a big home run hitter, hitting only 40 throughout his entire career. Smith, however, seemed to be generally fast, stealing over 20 bases 6 times in his career. However, the most bizarre thing about Jack Smith is his ability to score runs when he was on base. In 1925, Smith scored 65.4 percent of the time he was on base. Smith got on base 86 times during the season and scored a run 53 times. This is the highest success percentage of all-time. Though this stat appears to be luck and this idea is generally supported by the fact that Smith and many other not well-known players made the list, Smith made the Top 50 list 5 times in his career, while no one else made the list more than twice.
I used facial recognition to identify the player in Slide 88 as Jack Smith, and the player in Slide 89 as Del Gainer. All of these slides deal with sliding and appear to be of the same players, making the players in slide 86 Smith and Gainer.
Good condition;
This digital image is made from two separate digital scans; one scan of the lantern slide (reflective); one scan of the image (transparecy); 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"
Eigenauer, John D. "The Mystery of Jack Smith’s Runs." Society for American Baseball Research, [ https://sabr.org/research/mystery-jack-smith-s-runs] . Accessed 21 May 2018. ___Internet Archive___ [http://web.archive.org/web/20180521134512/https://sabr.org/research/mystery-jack-smith-s-runs ].
Identifier:
LANT-BSBL-090-03
090