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Show ii TO WET : mew m Fanning One of Coast League Pitchers Who Has Mastered It. Take a nice new ball, ffsb from th f J iactcry. Fonghen a soor on tho surfaon ! no bigger than a dime, if you wish, and ! place it in the hand of a pitcher with j only ordinary t-peed, and t-1 i 11 moro Ordinary curves. Instantly vour piteher bei-.j'iics more form iu able than Va Iter j.lolin-nn or ChnsU r.at hewson, and ho ha an artiele ot' eoods h i i the greatest great-est bai'-nien in the world can't fathom. I le becomes an ' ' emery ball ' ' pi to her. The latest addition to the bjisebitll ca Theory of fn-ak i onus is si ill Greek io most f;ms. It. is onlv alr- thar the expression has crept into newspaper news-paper eolunms. although thu ihing which it describes has btcn known to the wise;i,ues of baseball tor the past) j thr'V or four years. Itusell Ford ist paid tt be the rliseoverer of tho new fouler. In a eoiilideminl mood ho passed flie secret on tu two or threa (other pitebers, aud in tho same manner lit reached Skeetrr ' J Fanning, who introduced in-troduced it into Coast league society. Put the sad thing to be nofed iu connection con-nection with the emery ball' is that: its use is frowned on. In the American, asuciatioli there js a rule that any piicher detected uing the latest m.eni -ber of the deception familv will bo tined $100 and bUSpended "for thirty da-vs. As far an is known, this is tho on!v league to lake official action with regard to the ' ' emery ball. ' ' ol though all umpires ha.ve been instructed to maintain a ?Ioe watch against its use. How It Works. The ntw twister get;-, it? name frm. tho fact that the roughened surface was first produced by massagine a small spot with a piece or sandpaper! It was discovered that the act made the horse-hido horse-hido perform gyrations which it had never been known to perform before. If needs to be thrown only with ordinary speed and comes up to tho plate straight and true, aud looking an fat as a balloon to the batsman. "ow, here is what it does. Whn. within a foot or two of the plate i! breaks suddenly and goe-s up or down, according to the way it was thrown, almost al-most perpendicularly. The jump in generally ior eight or ten inches, when ir breaks suddenly again and shoots right across the pi ate. Isro batsman in the world can gaue it. It may go up or down, or the pitcher may make ir, take a side motion, and unless tho catcher is aware of -what's coming ami tho direction it will take, he's helpless help-less as the batsman. Danger to Batsmen. The element of danger to the tta turn tu-rn an is the reason why the new ball looked upon with disfavor. It breaks so fast that he has no chance of stepping step-ping out of tho way should ho happen to get in the road. That nnd the policy which seems to favor making tho pitcher's pitch-er's lot ss difficult as possible. If tho ball happened to be high and thrown to break in toward the plate, thero'd hn no escape for tho batter. He would get as nice a boaning as if someone stood over his head and pounded away with a. club. Toward Tbe latter part of last season Fanning, pitching in Oakland one Sunday Sun-day morning, got hold of a ball thati collided with the stand. "Skcet" used his finger nail to complete the corrnga-! corrnga-! lion, and no ono but himsoLf and Walter i Schmidt knew what was going on. Tho result was two hits for tho opposition, j and Fanning allowed them simply to-; to-; divert suspicion from himself. He "tried i"Rube'' Gardner out on it in the Imperial Im-perial Valley league this winter, and m four trips to the bat Gardner didn't; touch tho ball once. |