[thekingofclout]

Originally Posted by Scott Garner

Hi Graig,
That's a great vintage photo sequence of Hubbell! Very cool!
There are three things that I found interesting when I was looking at them:

1) It's very interesting what a compact (short) stride that "King Carl' took when delivering a pitch. Unlike many other elite pitchers that I have examined, it appears that Hubbell was much more of an arm thrower rather than using his legs to provide the power. I know that the screwball was his forte, but I recall another pretty nifty modern screwballer, Fernando Valenzuela, had a much more powerful leg drive towards the plate.

2) Wow, the end position of Hubbell's arm at the finish of the throw is amazing! His arm is twisted almost backwards!! No wonder there haven't been many pitchers to adopt this pitch. How taxing this must have been on the arm!!

3) Hubbell's balance at the finish of his delivery is extrordinary and put him in an excellent position to field the ball. Without examining the records I would suspect that he probably was an excellent defensive pitcher. I will have to check this out when I get a minute....

BTW, here's an interesting factoid: Carl Hubbell once pitched an 18 inning 1-0 shutout vs. St. Louis on July 2, 1933 (a ML record shared with fellow HOF'er Walter Johnson). The tough luck opposing pitcher went 17 innings and was the L.P. Framing this in the context of modern pitching, that's pretty incredible! I actually have a ticket to the Hubbell 18 inning shutout game. It's one of my favorites in my collection.

Thanks for sharing these!

I concur with Scott on these Graig. Should make a wonderful painting.