El Paso Herald · El Paso, Texas · 1913

How Great Men Play the Game: Ed Walsh

Scar takes up Ed Walsh of the White Sox in August 1913 and explains the spitball in full: the grip that keeps the saliva on the smooth surface between the stitches, the stride that takes the ball ten feet nearer the batter, and did you ever notice that pretty little cupid bow mouth of Edward's?

How Great Men Play the Game reaches the wettest arm in the American League: “Ed. Walsh, Star Pitcher, Chicago White Sox.” In 1913 the spitball was legal, respectable and nobody threw it better, so Scar treats it the way a trade paper treats a patented process. “Walsh pitches his famous spit-ball with an overhand delivery, the ball leaving his hand on a line with the shoulder.”

The technical drawings get better from there. “His great speed is enhanced by a most unusual spread of his legs which takes the ball ten feet nearer the batter before leaving his hand,” under a figure split nearly flat to the ground. And then the panel gives over its largest real estate to a single enormous fist: “To prepare the ‘spitter’ he grips the ball with his thumb, third and fourth fingers; the first and second carry the saliva on the smooth surface between the stitches.” That is the full recipe, printed in a family newspaper, for the pitch that won Walsh 40 games in 1908.

Which makes the corner box all the funnier. “And did you ever notice? That pretty little cupid bow mouth of Edward’s didst thou???” And there it is, drawn in loving close-up: the small tidy mouth that was, professionally speaking, the source of everything. Scar knew exactly what he was doing.