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Show SlBESTBICK How Ed Walsh Perfected His Pitching Is Graphically Told ' Watches For Secrets. Young pitchers just breaking Into the game would do well to emulate Ed Walsh, the spitball artist of the Chicago White Sox, who was recently asked .how he learned to throw his famous "spitter." "Well, I'll have to tell you that with a confession. I always have made a practice of grabbing anything that any other pitcher had whenever 1 saw it. That is the way I have perfected per-fected my pitching. No pitching se-I se-I cret is safe around me. One spring (j I reported to the White Sox in Mar- lin Springs, where the Giants now li train. j "There was another young pitcher ! there named Elmer Stricklett He I and I chummed together. One day Comiskey got him out to see what he could do, and I heard Elmer tell r him that he had something good. That was enough for me. I certainly had not. What I saw was the first spit-ball. spit-ball. "I saw how Stricklett did it, and I tried it myself. You hear all kinds, of stories -about the birth of the spitball, but I believe that Elmer Stricklett was the first pitcher who used it. "It's a wonderful ball. Many people peo-ple have an idea that you can only throw one kind of a twister with it; as a matter of fact, you can make a spitball do anything, follow any curve. Reverse Twist. "The physics back of a spitball is the reverse twist. By wetting the fingers held on top of the ball and keeping your thumb perfectly dry, you make "the ball spin over and forward for-ward that is to say, it spins away from your fingers and towards your thumb. The effect is a perfectly astounding pitch downward. It goeB straight for a batter's head, then swerves out and takes a sudden dive downward. "After you learn to control it. a spitter is an assassinator of batting averages. I have frequently allowed a batter to pile up three balls just for fun, then cut over three spitters on the corner and struck him out "I hear a lot of pitchers complain that the spitters cannot be controlled that is a wild, erratic, that goes its own way without discipline. That is not so. The trouble is that they don't learn to do it before trying it. "Before I had the nerve to use a spitball in a game. I practiced it for two years and part of another. "I used it for the first time in desperation. des-peration. I was pitching against Cleveland in 1904, and they were murdering mur-dering me. It was awful. 1 never got such a lacing in my life. Then 1 1 pulled this new spitter on them and got away with it. |