Jack Corbett: 2 Questions

[westsidegrounds]

These are toughies, I think. This is a guy I just learned of, and I wonder how many other people know about him. So please, no looking up. I'll give hints later if necessary.

okay, Jack Corbett:

(1) What essential article associated with the game of baseball did he invent?

(2) Which of his former batboys immortalized him in fiction, and under what name?

[Brooklyn]

These are toughies, I think. This is a guy I just learned of, and I wonder how many other people know about him. So please, no looking up. I'll give hints later if necessary.

okay, Jack Corbett:

(1) What essential article associated with the game of baseball did he invent?

Didn't he invent a different type of base?

[westsidegrounds]

mmmmmm welllll .... the game today would not be the same without his specific invention .....

Bonus Hint -

He managed the Asheville Tourists in the early part of the 20th Century. A kid whose parents ran a local boarding house was the batboy.

[Tyrus4189Cobb]

Could we get another hint for the second part?

[westsidegrounds]

Could we get another hint for the second part?

In 1930, the former batboy wrote "I am proud of my people, proud of my mountaineer and pioneer and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry, and proud of the place I came from, although I have been told they do not want me back there, and that I am no longer welcome."

[Tyrus4189Cobb]

I'm stumped, so I looked it up. Good trivia question

[westsidegrounds]

I'm stumped, so I looked it up. Good trivia question

Thank you. Kind of amazing that he impacted baseball significantly in two such diverse areas, and yet is pretty near unknown.

[Second Base Coach]

This is about break-away bases. I think there is an official name for them, but it escapes me. The idea was to remove the bags that were anchored to the ground by a belt running through a metal loop to one that is in use today. I think it was the better mousetrap and I don't we have evolved from this design since then.

And if you hit a home run, and circle these bases, well then you have run your route and You Can't Go Home Again until your next time up to bat. Remember that, Nebraska Crane. And please wait your turn in the batting order or you will be batting out of turn and we will have to feed you to a Wolfe.

[westsidegrounds]

I believe 2BC has got it.

In reverse order:

(2) Jack Corbett managed the Asheville Tourists in the old Class D North Carolina State League in 1915-16. The batboy was Thomas Wolfe, who grew up to be one of the Big Four of mid-20th century American novelists. Wolfe used Corbett as the model for baseball star "Nebraska Crane", in his novel You Can't Go Home Again. There, the protagonist (essentially Wolfe himself) telephones Crane, a childhood friend, on a whim, & has dinner with him and his family. To the protagonist, who feels rootless and unfocused, Crane seems a man grounded in American values and virtues. It's the first, and one of the few, appearances of a baseball player in a "serious" work of literature.

(1) For his other, less peripheral, contribution, watch any major league baseball game - you'll see three of them. He designed the "Jack Corbett Hollywood Base", used throughout MLB since 1939.

(It's the combination, the way he gained baseball immortality as both a fictional icon and a practical contributor to the daily reality of the game, that I think is interesting (unique?)).