What We Learn from the Past

Cy Young

by Hap Rocketto

My two favorite sports are shooting and baseball. Whereas I am pretty good at doing the former I am better at watching the latter. While not always apparent to the naked eye, there are quite a few similarities between America’s two favorite past times.

First of all they both use a ball. The official Major League baseball consists of a 13/16th of an inch rubber encapsulated spherical cork center, about the size of a Bing cherry, called the “pill.” Around the pill are four tightly wrapped windings of various sizes of wool and polyester/cotton yarn. The leather covering is made from full-grained white Holstein cowhide, it used to be horsehide but all things change. Perhaps the change was made because cowhide makes the best of leather, it should, it keeps the cow together.

The cover is hand stitched together with 88 inches of waxed red thread. There is an apocryphal story that the number of stitches on a baseball corresponds to the number of beads on a Catholic Rosary. If this were true it would lend credence to the belief that God is a baseball fan because the first words in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, are, “In the big inning.”

Early baseballs were not very uniform but modern manufacturing techniques have created a high standard. Even with that the average life of a ball is only five to seven pitches.

In all competitive rifle shooting we use “ball” ammunition. The ubiquitous smallbore rimfire cartridge may not be longer than 1.1 inches and must be loaded with a lead or alloy bullet which may not exceed .23 inches in diameter or weigh more than 40 grains.

Just like the early baseballs, the 22 caliber ammunition of the first part of the 20th century was not consistent in quality but since then it has made great strides towards uniformity of high quality of manufacture. Unlike a ball, unfortunately, the average cartridge lasts only one shot.

Both sports are best when contested outdoors over natural grass and in sunshine and are often brought indoors in either a shooting gallery or a batting cage. At its worst baseball is played indoors in one of two modern abominations, the enclosed domed stadia housing the Minnesota Twins and the Tampa Bay Rays.

The fields of play have been remarkably consistent for much of each sport’s history. The infield dimensions of the baseball field, what Roger Kahn called The Stonehenge of America, have been set in concrete, 90 feet from base to base, 60 feet six inches from pitcher’s mount to home plate, 127 feet three and 3/8th inches from home to second base, and a minimum distance of 250 feet to the nearest fence. For the smallbore rifleman it is 50 feet indoors, and 50 yards, 50 meters, and 100 yards outdoors.

What really joins the sports is their reverent regard for their histories. In both sports the past informs the present. As important as the anecdotal history might be, peopled as it is with the cast of heroes, villains, and characters that enrich each sport, the mythical deeds are not at the root of this regard. The accomplishments and antics of baseball legends such as Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Moe Berg, and Lou Gehrig, are matched in the shooting world by tales of Kellogg Kennon Venerable Casey, Morris Fisher, Calvin Lloyd, and Lones Wigger. They are an important part of the rich tapestry of the sport, and it is indeed a poor piece of cloth that can’t be improved upon by a bit of embroidery and that is the problem. Anecdotes are qualitative and, as such, open to embellishment.

For both sports the heart of the sport’s continuity is the simple fact that each is quantifiable. Simply put, baseball and shooting are numerological narratives. Because the basic dimensions of the baseball field, shooting range, and targets have not changed in living memory the past, present, and future are readily compared.

Yes, to be sure not all the numbers are squeaky clean in either sport. Baseball had the “Dead Ball” era, from time to time the height of the pitcher’s mound has been changed, and the season is now longer. In shooting the rifles have improved, there has been an occasional change in rules, and we can shoot all year around. But overall things have remained amazingly consistent.

As a result we can look at the shooting records from fifty years ago, from five years ago, or from five days ago and easily compare ourselves to the greats and not so greats of the game. In a historical sense we can shoot side by side with a rifleman who died before we were born, if he shot the same course of fire at the same range. For that reason the charm of the historical shooting narrative lies, not in watching a motion picture of a shooter past, but reading his match report and knowing that you have shot on the same range over the same distance, at the same target accomplishing, to a greater or lesser degree, the same feats.