Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-08-18
= EOPLE who attend base ball
games and wildly applaud the
home teams doings and groan at
the triumphs Of the visitors and

register IeTVeHC WISHES LOT tiie
eternal damnation Of the umpire who
called Billy This 'out'' or Tommy Ia,
safe" as the case may be, never allow
their attention to be diverted from what
actually goes on before their eyes by
thoughts of physics and mathematics and
geometry and all that sort of thing.
They know, in a hazy way, that the
we'll known firm of Gravitation & Co.
and other worthless who helped TO make
school days unpleasant are just as
rampant and important at the Florida
avenue grounds as ever they were in
the schoolroom. They know that a
pitched ball curves, not so much because
Walter Johnson instructs it to curve as
because Gravitation & Co. allow it to fol-
low Mr.. Johnson's instructions.
But it's all very hazy. and when the
pinch hitter swats the ball to deep center
In the ninth with three on bases and
three needed for the home team to tie,
the average fan simply leaps to his feet.
swings his hat and turns his lungs in
side out. not caring a continental whether
Sir Isaac Newton discovered the law of
gravitation or the law of gravitatio Sir
Isaac.
But. nevertheless. physics and mathe-
mates and things far more abstruse
are present at every game Of base ball
and render decisions from which even
Griffith cannot successfully appeal.
Every once in while some learned pro-
lessor. who has never been interested In
anything fans" think. except the fact
that X plus equals the square of the
diameter of the rest of the alphabet sud
denly breaks loose in some magazine with
a deep disQuisition on tennis balls or fish,
ing rods or golf clubs. showing that they
are. after ALL first cousins to the square
of the hypothenuse.
The same sort Of thing happens in base
ball Every once and a while some pro-
lessor talks learnedly about a curved ball,
whereupon the fans realize that the
said curved ball moves In high scientific
society-only to forget 1t again just as
soon as the pitcher starts to pitch the first
ball.
Thus it goes. But, in spite OF the in
difference of fandom. the high-brows can't
keep their attention of base ball. Now it
is the spitball which Is being taken up
by science. Last Monday Prof W. s.
Franklin, head of the department of
physics at Lehigh University, who is Civ
ing a course OF lectures al the Columbia
University summer school, explained by
means of diagrams and all the solemn
language of wisdom why a base ball
curves when a pitcher desires it so to do,
and what the real reason is for the highly
interesting and mysufying conduct of a
spitball.
In his lecture there is absolutely no talk
of we'll known pitchers. Nothing comes
to the surface but the eternal verities of
physics. That Spitball idea degenerates
into the merest commonplace of physics.
Those who listen to Prof. Franklin should,
after while. become as disdainful toward
the mysteries of pitching as children. five
minutes after lessons are over, are to-
ward the hidden force that makes water
boil at a certain temperature.
Prof Franklin shows. first of all. that
the law governing the curving of pitched
ball was discovered by one Daniel Ber-
noulli, Swiss savant. who died way back
in 1882 Bernoulli, of course. knew moth
ing whatever about base ball for the sim
pie reason that the game did not exist
when he was alive. But the fact remains
that 1t was he who first studied and made
clear the reasons why the flight of rap
idly spinning ball is curved.