Vintage Athletes - Part 33

 Muybridge Baseball Error

Previously, we showed some of the groundbreaking stop-motion photography by Eadweard Muybridge for his 1887 book Animal Locomotion, featuring nude athletes at the University of Pennsylvania, including baseball player Thomas Love Latta, shown above as a senior in 1887.

Today, I'm going to focus on plate 288 in Animal Locomotion, called Baseball Error.  It shows Latta failing to catch a ball.

The Penn student newspaper, The Pennsylvanian, talked about Muybridge's work in an article on Sept. 28,1886.  To quote the article:

But the part most interesting to University men is the delineation of the athletic sports, foot-ball and base-ball, running, jumping, vaulting and wrestling.  Nearly every well-known University athlete of the past two or three years has served as a model in the nude, many of them showing magnificent physiques, and exhibiting exquisitely the play of every muscle.

Then the article talks specifically about the plate Baseball Error:

"See how curiously," said Mr. Muybridge, referring to a photographic series of one of our most prominent base-ball nine, "and yet how perfectly, this plate illustrates the occurrence of an error in catching."  True enough.  In the successive pictures the ball is muffed, strikes the player's thigh, runs up under his arm and across his back, while he is looking eagerly on the wrong side for it.

Above is a gif that I made from the photos of plate 288, Baseball Error, that the article is talking about.  And the following are the original ten photos from plate 288 that the gif was made from (I have edited them to improve contrast, since they were slightly faded):

Based on these photos, the author of the article in the Penn student newspaper thought that the ball struck Latta's thigh and rolled across his back.  That seems very unlikely.  Did it really happen?

Like most of his plates, for plate 288, Muybridge took photos of the action from two directions.  Above is a gif that I made from the second series of photos in plate 288, Baseball Error.  I slowed down the gif so you can see what's happening.

First, the ball has bounced on the ground, and he's trying to catch it on the bounce.  Second, when he fails to catch it, it continues in an arc behind his back.  It probably didn't strike his thigh, and it definitely didn't roll across his back.  That's just what the Penn student newspaper author thought was happening from looking at the first set of photos.  The student author can be excused because the book, which shows the action from both views, had not been published yet in 1886, so I presume the student author only saw the first set of photos, not the second.

The student author highly praises Muybridge's work as the publication of Animal Locomotion was nearing completion.  To read the whole 1886 article from The Pennsylvanian, click on the photo above to enlarge it.