1924 World Series footage

[4815162342]

Originally Posted by ChasingPaper

Well thought out and insightful.

It’s Walter Johnson for crying out loud.

[ChasingPaper]

Originally Posted by 4815162342

It’s Walter Johnson for crying out loud.

3 out of 5 scenes showing pitchers pitching were not WJ. Even still and blasphemous as it may be, even watching WJ pitch, you can see its all arm.
I cant recall where i watched it, but I recently saw a video demonstrating how they calculated his pitch speed and showed that it was 83mph.

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by ChasingPaper

3 out of 5 scenes showing pitchers pitching were not WJ. Even still and blasphemous as it may be, even watching WJ pitch, you can see its all arm.
I cant recall where i watched it, but I recently saw a video demonstrating how they calculated his pitch speed and showed that it was 83mph.

As Hank Thomas points out in his biography of Walter Johnson, the apparatus Johnson had to throw through at the Remington Arm's bullet-testing range in Connecticut was at "shoulder height to measure bullets fired from a standing position and Johnson couldn't get his sidearm throws to go straight through the plate. "At length, however" it was reported, "after some effort and with a consequent loss in speed in an attempt to place the ball accurately, "the sphere was successfully hurled in the proper direction, broke one of the fine wires in transit and collided with a heavy thud against the steel plate." Johnson's best throw clocked at 122 feet per second (82 m.p.h), Rucker's at 113, both on their third and last tries. Despite the flawed procedure, it does allow for some comparison. In June 1933, Van Lingle Mungo of the Dodgers and Lefty Gomez of the Yankees, two of the fastest pitchers of their era, were tested at West Point's department of ballistics and mathematics, presumably with more sophisticated equipment. Mungo registered 113 feet per second and Gomez 111 on their best throws."

Given that Walter Johnson was unable to use his natural motion during the speed test in Bridgeport, Connecticut, I don't think it is a reliable gauge of the Big Train's actual speed.

[Hankphenom]

Here we go again! 85 MPH? Where'd you pull that out of? Cobb said the ball "hissed" as it went by, Crawford described it as a "swoosh." Sisler said in 1916 if Walter had been willing to put the first couple pitches under the batter's chin, nobody ever would have gotten close enough to the plate to get a hit off him. But gosh, imagine if today's pitching coaches had only been around to correct the flaws in his delivery, what an eight years he might have had before the TJ surgery failed and he was done! Go look at Johnson's stats and think that these were mostly put up in the small ball era, when giving up even one run might mean the ballgame, and that he never really had an outpitch. Fastballs, just fastballs, one after the other, see if you can hit it. Walter said that early on, a lot of people tried to get him to change his unique motion to a more conventional one, but he was striking out everyone in sight, so why should he?
Here's some torque for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aN0viXDAiU

[4815162342]

Originally Posted by Hankphenom

Here we go again! 85 MPH? Where'd you pull that out of? Cobb said the ball "hissed" as it went by, Crawford described it as a "swoosh." Sisler said in 1916 if Walter had been willing to put the first couple pitches under the batter's chin, nobody ever would have gotten close enough to the plate to get a hit off him. But gosh, imagine if today's pitching coaches had only been around to correct the flaws in his delivery, what an eight years he might have had before the TJ surgery failed and he was done! Go look at Johnson's stats and think that these were mostly put up in the small ball era, when giving up even one run might mean the ballgame, and that he never really had an outpitch. Fastballs, just fastballs, one after the other, see if you can hit it. Walter said that early on, a lot of people tried to get him to change his unique motion to a more conventional one, but he was striking out everyone in sight, so why should he?
Here's some torque for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aN0viXDAiU

+1

[JimC]

Has someone made sure Val has seen this footage?

[Beercan collector]

If you watch the video it’s obvious they could run a lot faster back then

[ValKehl]

Originally Posted by JimC

Has someone made sure Val has seen this footage?

Jim, I really enjoyed watching this footage, especially seeing WaJo pitching!

[jingram058]

Originally Posted by Hankphenom

Here we go again! 85 MPH? Where'd you pull that out of? Cobb said the ball "hissed" as it went by, Crawford described it as a "swoosh." Sisler said in 1916 if Walter had been willing to put the first couple pitches under the batter's chin, nobody ever would have gotten close enough to the plate to get a hit off him. But gosh, imagine if today's pitching coaches had only been around to correct the flaws in his delivery, what an eight years he might have had before the TJ surgery failed and he was done! Go look at Johnson's stats and think that these were mostly put up in the small ball era, when giving up even one run might mean the ballgame, and that he never really had an outpitch. Fastballs, just fastballs, one after the other, see if you can hit it. Walter said that early on, a lot of people tried to get him to change his unique motion to a more conventional one, but he was striking out everyone in sight, so why should he?
Here's some torque for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aN0viXDAiU

+1 total nonsense. I'm sick and tired of this. Keep on convincing yourselves they were throwing soft pitch watermelons. That these morons today are so much bigger and better and they all throw 110 mph. That they don't totally break down at the drop of a hangnail. Total BS by armchair people who obviously never played baseball and don't have a clue.

[Snapolit1]

I knew the immediate responses to my post were going to rile people up.

I'm somewhere in the middle on this. I don't care about Ty Cobb's report of hearing a ball hiss. Sure, Johnson threw very hard for the era. I'm sure in 1920 people were also saying "my god. . . the automated horseless carriage just flew buy me at lightening speed. . . ." Everything is relative.

Having said that, some of these guy were throwing plenty hard. Not they weren't over 100, but they threw damm hard.

And comparing people from different eras with all the variables at play is just silly.

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

And comparing people from different eras with all the variables at play is just silly.

Yes, but I do think that pitcher effectiveness, including the fastball, might just be the closest you can get in all of sports. And in my research, I did pay a lot of attention to the opinions of people who experienced the game close at hand in the "Golden Era" and were still doing that several generations later, into the 1980s, in fact. While certainly not dispositive, and allowing for some generational bias, you have to listen to them. And I don't think I ever came across any of the old timers who claimed that Nolan Ryan was faster than Johnson, not one; or Ryne Duren; or Sandy Koufax; or Herb Score; or Bob Feller (who was always the first to say he thought that Johnson was the greatest pitcher ever and also the fastest); or Lefty Grove; or Dazzy Vance. Who knows what they would have to say about Clemons, or Pedro, or Randy Johnson, or Chapman, etc.? The string runs out when all the old guys are dead. One thing we know for sure is that one of these days, if not already, someone will come along who throws harder than Johnson did. That's guaranteed. Records are made to be broken, as the saying goes, and Walter has lost a lot of them over the years. I can hear him now, saying, "Well, that's just fine," in his Kansas twang. But Larry Ritter didn't name his book "The Glory of All Times" for a reason. To be "The Glory of Their Times" is all any of us could ask for, and those guys knew they were the luckiest sons of bitches ever born, to be where they were doing what they did. That will always have to be enough for them--and for us.

[timber63401]

Originally Posted by jingram058

+1 total nonsense. I'm sick and tired of this. Keep on convincing yourselves they were throwing soft pitch watermelons. That these morons today are so much bigger and better and they all throw 110 mph. That they don't totally break down at the drop of a hangnail. Total BS by armchair people who obviously never played baseball and don't have a clue.

You pull Walter Johnson out of a time machine and put him on a mound he wouldn't be one of the best 100 pitchers in MLB. Just like you take the best Football or Basketball player from 75 years ago and dropped them in todays game it would be a massacre. Its not knocking the old players its just simply evolution.

[JollyElm]

I guess the ancient Egyptian pyramid builders wouldn't be able to construct a single-bedroom bungalow nowadays, because they wouldn't know the first thing about computerized AutoCAD programs. Sure, makes sense.

Can we just stop going down this same rabbit hole time after time after time, and just enjoy the video for what it is??? I'm beggin' ya!!!