1/4/2023 0 Comments Radar speed clocker![]() ![]() The early versions of the gun would also offer wildly different readings. And in the days before velocities were listed on every scoreboard, he couldn't convince the Orioles to send someone on the road with the big league team to operate a gun and signal its reading to the dugout. In his book Weaver on Strategy, the Orioles manager wrote that it took him six years to convince the front office to provide them to the clubs' minor league teams. ![]() He also saw it as a useful tool to help determine whether a pitcher was tiring. Orioles manager Earl Weaver was an early adopter, but like Litwhiler, he saw the gun as most valuable for making sure there was a big enough differential between a pitcher's fastball and his changeup. He wrote to MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn in hopes of alerting all major league teams, and he traveled to spring training in 1975 to show it off to big league managers, coaches and executives. Litwhiler understood almost immediately that the radar gun could be revolutionary. The original JUGS gun is now on display at the Hall of Fame. Litwhiler paid the MSU police for one of their early guns, which he sent to Paulson to be adapted for use in timing baseball pitches. ![]() He contacted John Paulson, whose JUGS company made pitching machines that were already in regular use. Litwhiler saw it mostly as a teaching tool, one that would allow his pitchers to measure the velocity difference between their fastballs and changeups. Litwhiler was the coach at Michigan State in 1973, and when he saw campus police using radar to time speeding cars, he quickly understood that the devices might be applied to baseball. Anonymous/Associated Pressĭanny Litwhiler is generally credited with adapting the modern radar gun to baseball. Photoelectric cells and something called a Lumiline Chronograph were also tried with Feller, but the estimates of his speed varied so wildly (98.6 to 107.9) that it's hard to draw any real conclusions or make any comparisons to pitchers today.ĭanny Litwhiler on the 1943 St. Thirty years later, Feller took the motorcycle test and his fastball (according to his memory) was estimated at 104 mph. Bob Feller was Rapid Robert.Ī hundred years ago, Johnson's fastball was timed against a speeding motorcycle and estimated at 97 mph. Walter Johnson's fastball "hissed with danger," Ty Cobb said. A Negro League pitcher named Joe Rogan became Bullet Rogan and went all the way to the Hall of Fame. We cared about velocity even before we could measure it.Ī pitcher named Leslie Ambrose Bush often walked more batters than he struck out, but he threw so hard he earned the name Bullet Joe. Getty Imagesįor as long as baseball has been played, hard-throwing pitchers have been part of the lore and part of the lure. The Bob Feller statue at Progressive Field in Cleveland. ![]()
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