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In 1884, the brothers began making glass home-canning jars, the product that established Ball as a household name. The brothers—Edmund, Frank, George, Lucius and William—moved the company from Buffalo, New York, to Muncie, Indiana, in 1887 to take advantage of abundant natural gas reserves essential. Early Origins of the Ball family. The surname Ball was first found in the 'west side of England, being at present most numerous in Lancashire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Gloucestershire.
From the fields and stadiums, to the uniforms, to the statistics, baseball is good design. There’s no better evidence of that than the iconic white and red ball. With its pristine white surface and high contrast red stitching, today’s baseball is a beautiful union of form and function, an almost ideal Modernist object. But it didn’t start out that way. The baseball didn’t emerge fully formed when the first batter stepped up to the first plate. Like, it’s hard to attribute its invention to one person, especially considering that in those heady, mustachioed, pre-professional days of baseball, balls were made by cobblers from the rubber remnants of old shoes, with rubber cores wrapped in yarn and a leather cover – if you were lucky. In some regions, sturgeon eyes were used instead of melted shoe rubber.
In the 1840s and ’50s, it was anything but an exact science and pitchers often just made their own balls. Obviously, there was some variety in size and weight that resulted just from the nature of the handmade process and separate regional developments. Examples of the “lemon peel” baseball(Keyman collectibles)The differences extended from the center of the core to the surface of the leather wrapping. One of the more prominent cover designs wrapped the wound core in a single piece of leather tied off with four distinct lines of stitching, earning it the apt nickname “lemon peel.” These balls were smaller –about six inches in circumference compared to today’s nine- and they were lighter (in weight), darker (in color) and softer (in softness) than those used today.
And the game was a little different too. In the earliest games, runners could be thrown out by getting “soaked,” or hit directly with a ball by a fielder – a rule still occasionally practiced on playgrounds and sandlots. These light, compact balls with rubber (or fish-eye) cores were much “livelier” than today’s balls – that is to say, the could be hit further and bounce higher.
The result was a scoreboard that looked like something from a basketball game.In the mid 1850s, ball clubs in the New York area elected to standardize the ball’s weight at 5.5-6 ounces and its circumference at somewhere between 8 and 11 inches, resulting in a larger, heavier, less lively ball. There was obviously some room for variety, but it was the first step toward regulation.Throughout the 1850s and ’60s, the ball (and the rules) continued to evolve but there was still plenty of room for variation – more rubber in the core and a tighter winding resulted in a “live” ball while less rubber and a loose wind yielded a “dead” ball. Of course, home teams made the balls best suited to their own strengths and style of play. Ball selection was a key strategy and a critical benefit of home-field advantage. Visiting teams with big hitters would, more often than not, find themselves playing with a “dead” ball.There is some debate about the origin of the 2-part “figure 8” cover that we we know today.
Some baseball historians say it was first developed by a shoemaker’s son named Ellis Drake, who supposedly put the design together with some of his father’s scrap leather in an effort to create a more resilient cover. If this is true, Drake failed to patent his idea and others started producing similar designs. Others give credit to Colonel William A. Cutler, who may have invented the familiar stitching in 1858 and sold it to one of the first baseball manufacturers, William Harwood.
After some research, I found some sources that indicate that it comes from the expression body english, which indicates the body gestures and movements that go with the speaking:. Oddly enough, the origins of 'English' don't appear in the Oxford English Dictionary, even though the word is right there on the cover. False advertising, sez I. However, other sources are pretty much in agreement. 'English' comes from 'body English,' the contortions a thrower/roller/hitter goes through after the ball has left the hand/club/cue.
These motions are called body English because they relate to the physical gestures we employ when we speak. Which is differentiated from 'body language,' emotions communicated through posture rather than gesture.So, while 'body English' is what we do after the ball is in motion, the term 'English' is reserved to describe motion actually put on the ball by its spin. What do the English call 'English'? As in 'Don't hit it in the center, hit in on the.' Sometimes the English make sense, even if 'English' doesn't.Emphasis mine. Taken from.There's similar stuff written in:ENGLISH: As you note in your question, 'english' (always lower case) is spin put on a ball, usually but not always a billiard ball (baseball, tennis and golf balls can also be 'englished').
The British call the same effect 'side,' because it is accomplished by striking the ball slightly off-center, thus imparting the spin. According to billiard experts, this spin allows the ball to do all sorts of remarkable things, such as curve, hide behind other balls, and disappear entirely when really needed. If I had paid attention back in high school physics while they were discussing vector momentum, I'd be able to explain how all this works, but I wasn't and can't, so I suppose we'll let the scientific discussion go at that.As to why they call the spin 'english,' the answer turns out to be surprisingly simple. It is derived from the actions that the player makes to cause the ball to spin - the extra gestures, physical effort and 'oomph' we know as 'body english.'
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We call those contortions 'body english,' incidentally, because such physical gestures (waving your hands, hopping up and down, etc.) are sometimes used to boost to the expressive effect of our spoken English.Emphasis mine again.Also some user reports the same in the link (the forum one) from the other answer. Hope it helps.A little note: There is more in the forum stuff, I didn't report it for space-allocation reasons. I'm aware these might not be the most official or reliable sources, but there is nothing on dictionaries, which makes me think it's not something really that clear, yet. If anyone disagrees or wants to comment, feel free to.
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