Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 196, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1913 — SWIFTEST PITCHER'S AMAZING RECORD [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SWIFTEST PITCHER'S AMAZING RECORD

“How do they know what Johnson's got— Whether he uses a curve or not— Whether his break is setT How can they tell how his outshoots fall? Whether his irufurve's big or small? How can they tell what he's got on the ball? Nobody's seen it yet.” tO sang a ialnor poet of the major leagues. The hero of this baseball epic was Walter Johnson, the marvelous pitcher of the Washington club, who 7 has just beaten all records by hurling the ball for 56 consecutive Innings with such skill and cunning that not a batsman of an opposing club has been able to score a run. Speed was the great factor in the achievement —dazzling, sizzling speed! The big Idahoan’s delivery is like the flight of a shell. The mightiest hitters of the American league are as helpless as town lot players when Johnson turns loose his fastest ball; “Ty" Cobb, “Home Run” Baker and Jackson alike are babes in his hands. Johnson’s amazing swiftness in pitching is no mere fancy. It has been scientifically measured. In the testing room of the Remington Arms company at Bridgeport, Conn., Johnson showed that his right arm could hurl the baseball at the rate of 122 feet a second! It was acknowledged that he could do even better, because in athletic parlance he was not warmed up. It is well known that a burler gathers speed as a game progresses. x Johnson flung the sphere through an aperture in a frame of wood about two feet square. Running from top to bottom were ten very delicate and filmy copper wires. These were broken by the ball, and by an electrical device the moment of passage was accurately timed. Five yards away was a steel plate and the impact of the ball on this barrier again caused the electric clock to register. Thus the exact time of the ball’s flight was mathematically determined. The velocity obtained by Johnson Is all the more extraordinary when It is known that a bullet from the new government .45 automatic pistol travels 800 feet per second. A high power hunting rifle, .35 caliber, auto-loading, travels 2,000 feet per second. The Twentieth Century limited, the fastest long-distance train in the world, makes the 978.7 miles from New York to Chicago in just 20 hours, or an average speed of 48.9 miles every hour. This means a velocity of nearly 72 feet a second. Suppose Johnson's speedball kept on traveling at 122 feet a second right on toward the Windy City at its own hurricane speed. It would eat up the 6,163,840 feet to Chicago in just 11 hours and 48 minutes. The ball

would beat the train to Chicago by eight hours and 12 minutes. In other words, the catcher who received the ball could go to bed, have a full night’s rest, get up and into his uniform again, and be on hand in the morning to meet the Twentieth Century as she rolled into Chicago. Putting it another way—the train leayps New York at 2:45 p. m. daily. Time is set back at Buffalo by just an hour, so that the onrushing train gains 60 minutes on her westward journey. Eleven hours and 48 minutes after the start Johnson’s bender has reached Chicago, or at 1:33 a. m. Chicago time, the roaring locomotive has just plunged through Cleveland without stopping, more than 350 miles away. The striking energy of Johnson’s missile was shown to be 160 foot pounds. That means that it possessed approximately half the force in impact of a bullet fired from a .45 automatic pistol! According to these figures, it takes less than half a second for a ball 'thrown by Johnson at his high speed to travel from his fingers to catcher’s glove! That is why he bewilders even the quickest witted batsman. He isn’t able to guess whether it is a straight ball, an in or an out curve, a drop, or whether the sphere is going to jump up into the air in defiance of the law of gravity. “Any time you get a hit off Johnson,” declared Napoleon Lajoie, himself one of the most formidable wielders of the bat that the game ever knew, “you must not think that you’re smart. Just figure that you’re lucky —lucky that you were able to make that blind swing at just the right spot There never was, and I doubt if there ever will be, a pitcher as great as Johnson. If he turned loose his very hardest throw with his best curve on it no catcher could get down in time to receive the ball. “Every ball he throws has stuff on it that can’t be solved. Some of the hops that his swiftest ones take are bigger curves than a man ever threw before. I've seen him slam balls up to the plate that didn’t look larger than a pinhead.” Not surprising, is it, that Johnson is such a terror? The quiet, modest young Idaho youth—he is only twenty-five years old —also fooled his opponents into giving him another record. Last year be struck out 303 men in 386 Innings. None of the other wizards could touch that mark. Before he became a big leaguer striking out batsmen was merely a pastime for him. Out in Weiser, when only nineteen, he was playing in the Idaho State league, and among the performances credited to him was the striking out of the

first eight men who faced Mm in an important game, and he later struck out 11 other men during the nine innings. And these men were all crack players, many of whom are now stars in the western' leagues. In that Idaho season Johnson was the slab artist in fifty-seven straight games in which not a run was scored off his delivery. So you see he got the habit early! After that feat Johnson applied to various smart managers of the clubs in the big cities. But they wouldn’t even give him a trial. They were disdainful, and easily declared that Johnson would be shattered by the heavy artillery of the major leagues. It remained for the then tail-ender Washington team to send Catcher Blenkenship in 1907 out to Weiser to investigate the picturesque stories that came east of the youth’s prowess. The scout lost no time in getting''Johnson to sign a contract as soon as he had seen him pitch a-few innings. That Washington is now one of the leading clubs of the American league is due in large part to the skill of the western recruit. When Johnson made good from the jump there was woe among all the Napoleonic managers who had turned him down. But his steady and astonishing improvement is shown by the following official table: Year. G. B.H. R. 8.8. 8.0. W. L. Av*. 1907 14 99 M H "J 5 8 .3M 1908 28 167 66 60 149 14 11 .818 1909 87 238 109 86 158 13 24 .333 1910 41 268 86 74 308 24 16 .600 1912 40 244 86 73 281 30 10 .750 > Total for I 6 years 198 1287 137 360 U 63 108 84 .563 A big, likable fellow is Johnson,- a raw-boned product of the prairie farms. There is nothing very speedy about him except his pitching. Otherwise he is slow as law. He moves slow, eats slow and even runs his motor car in an “out-of-gasoline manner.” He saves all his energy for the diamond. After seeing Johnson shoot the ball at the plate you wouldn’t wonder the poet was inspired to song. You wouldn’t wonder at the dazed batsmen. - If you can’t see it you can’t hit it