Thursday, March 19, 2009

Bradley Wants To Learn How To Throw The Curve

It is stated on good authority that Bradley, of the St. Louis Base Ball Club, has been after Jim Devlin, of the Louisville Nine, and endeavored to learn his "curve." But Devlin has refused to explain it to him.
-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, December 13, 1875

Peter Morris has this quote in A Game of Inches and writes that "With their livelihoods at stake, and the ever-present threat that a ban would be placed on any effective technique, pitchers often became secretive or proprietary...As noted earlier, late in life Candy Cummings said that he had been 'jealous of his discovery...'"

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