Scientific Baseball Has Changed The Old Game
Sunday Magazine posted an article published in The New York Times’s Sunday Magazine in 1911 on the deep strategy emerging in the then relatively new game of baseball:
Another development of later-day pitching is the moist ball. This curve has the sharpest “break” of any ball that is pitched. Russell Ford of the New York Americans and Ed Walsh of the Chicago White Sox have brought it to its highest scientific stage.
A small spot between the seams of the ball is covered with saliva. The pressure on one side of the ball is increased while the fingers slip easily off the wet spot. This gives the ball an unnatural revolution, and when thrown with speed it takes a sharp break, being almost impossible to hit.