CURVE PITCHING.

The curve delivery in base-ball pitching, says the Philadelphia Press, was the greatest change ever introduced into the game, and in these days, when an old-time straight pitcher would be knocked out of the box in one inning, there are a good many claimants for the credit of originating it. College men, with the exception of those from Harvard, always insist that Avery brought it to light at Yale, while the Harvard men, who naturally would refuse to see a curve of two feet in a Yale pitcher's delivery, incline to the opinion that Mann, of Princeton, was first on the diamond with it. Harvard's men have grounds for their belief, from the fact that the Harvard team first had a practical sight of the curve at Princeton in 1874, but as it did not have the effect of winning the game from them then, they regarded it more as a curiosity than anything of importance in the game. The fact was that Mann was so much excited about his new delivery that he did not know when to quit, and after the Harvard men had noticed that the ball always turned about a foot outward after leaving the pitcher's hand, they made their calculations and hammered at it accordingly. The game, up to the fifth inning, was right in the hands of Princeton's catcher, who captured the men one after another as they struck out, but when Harvard began to bat, the prospects changed at once, and Princeton lost by three clear runs. Mann had only one curve, and he did not even vary it by straight balls, so it failed of success against the straight pitching and fine head-work of Ernst and Tyng. Avery, at Yale, came out with his curve the same year, and many of the college nines of that time remember yet how he promised something new for the Harvard batters as the result of his winter's practice in the gymnasium. He did succeed in defeating them, and next year, by his effective pitching, helped his team to the championship.

Before that time, however, curve pitching was practiced in professional games, and, though its nature was not much understood, everybody seemed to know that a peculiar kind of ball could be delivered, and that Mathews, the present "curver" for the Athletics, was the man who was doing it. Arthur Cummings, who played in the Mutuals of Brocklyn in 1872, and in the Stars of Brooklyn in the years proceeding, also was known to pitch a deceptive ball, but as he quit playing professionally about 1874 his work was gradually forgotten and Matthews given all the credit for the innovation. The reason for the curve is something that professional players have never troubled themselves about, and though Matthews and Coleman, and, in fact, any of them, can tell exactly how a ball will go if it leaves the hand in a certain way, with a certain amount of force, why or how it does it they decline to explain. Yyng, of the New York Stock Exchange nine, or the Staten Island nine, as they now call it, is more ready with a theory, which he probably developed at Harvard while taking Ernst's hot balls from the bat. "The out curve," said he, "or the one from right to left, is the only curve that can be made, for the reason that a man can't throw a ball swiftly when he holds it in position to do anything else. To get an out-curve the ball must be held in such a way that its axis is perpendicular ; that is, with the back of the hand toward the ground. When it is thrown out in that position and made to revolve from right to left the resistance of the air is strongest on the right side and least on the left. The course of the ball then naturally inclines that way ; the more rapid the revolution, of course, the greater the curve. To direct the ball the other way the axis would have to be kept upright and the revolution reversed which could be done by holding the palm of the hand downward."