Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/72

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��PopnJnr Science Monthly

��INOICATOR

���BUCKET WH ON WHICH BAS^L FALLS AND OPER'irtfcS.- BELT TO IMDlCATElSjWjlK; OR'BALLS'ON INDICAJOR

��This apparatus for teaching the art of pitching a baseball provides for everything except derisive howls from the bleachers. Both the batter and the catcher are dummies. The catcher- dummy has a cavity for receiving pitched balls, the entrance to which corresponds with the area for a "strike." Above is an indicator for "strikes" and an indicator for "balls." When the pitcher throws a ball over the home plate at the right height, it enters the cavity in the dummy-catcher, drops down a chute and hits the blade of a bucket-wheel. Since the bucket-wheel is connected by belts with the indicator above, the pitcher sees his "strike" recorded. The ball is ultimately sent back to him by a return trough. If the pitcher fails to make a "strike," the ball drops into a bowl in which both the batter and catcher stand. The ball rolls into an opening and falls upon a bucket-wheel, connected by belts with a "ball" indicator. A special trough is provided for the return of the ball

��But such games, no iiiatlcT how in- genious and interesting to those who love ha.seball for itself, are tame sport for the active and are really only for the sedentary. Much larger and more intricate mechanisms are invented, pat-

��iMiteil, and operated at country fairs, where the spectator becomes an actual ])layer and ])itches against an auto- matic umpire.

The "automatic umpire" is usually some form of opening in a background.

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