Baseball As America

From the Tour: On the Road With Baseball As America

Taking it to the Streets: “Seeing” the World Series Outside of the Park

by Tom Shieber,
Baseball As America Curatorial Committee Member

(Article originally published in Memories and Dreams — Fall 2003)

The 1877 Harvard Baseball Club, which featured (middle row, from left): Harold Ernst, Fred Thayer and James Tyng (with catcher's mask).

Shinguards, chest protector, mitt, helmet, mask. Though the catcher’s equipment has long been referred to as “the tools of ignorance,” the label is quite unfair. Instead, we should praise the catcher’s gear as nothing less than “the tools of ingenuity,” for it was the spirit of invention that brought about the catcher’s highly specialized assemblage of armor. Case in point: the invention of the catcher’s mask. The story of the first catcher’s mask begins with the Harvard University baseball club, the team captain Fred Thayer, and its star pitcher Harold Ernst.

A muscular athlete, Thayer not only earned four letters in baseball, but also played in the first-ever Harvard-Yale football game in November 1875. As captain of the baseball club, it was Thayer who directed the team on the field: what the modern fan would recognize as a player-manager.

Ernst, who later became a professor of bacteriology at Harvard, began as an outfielder with the club nine in 1875, but later took on the role of starting pitcher. In a late-season game against archrival Yale, Ernst observed the new-fangled curveballs of Yale star Charles Avery. Curve pitching was in its infancy, and the seemingly inexplicable twist of the ball befuddled batters who were unprepared for such a weapon.

Over the winter of 1875-1876, Ernst mastered the technique of the curveball delivery, and when the baseball season resumed on April 13, he unveiled his new pitch against the powerful Lowell, Mass., ball club. He promptly no-hit his opponents, facing but one batter over the minimum.

Ernst’s impressive pitching throughout the season paced Harvard to a record of 25-12, but the club may very well have underachieved. On June 26, Harvard catcher Howard Thatcher committed three errors in a 7-6 loss to Yale. It was Harvard’s fifth loss in six games against the Elis, and it was apparent that not only did Ernst’s curves annoy opposing batters, but they also proved annoyingly difficult for his own catcher to handle.

The following season, a new catcher took over for Harvard, a mustachioed young man named James Tyng. But he, too, had trouble with Ernst’s pitching. Thayer later described Tyng as being “the best all-around natural ballplayer of my time.”

“In one or two games in which he caught behind the bat (sic), he had been hit by foul tips and had become more or less timid. He was, by all odds, the most available man as catcher for the season of ’77, and it was up to me to find some way to bring back his confidence,” Thayer said.

Thayer found the answer in the protective gear of another sport: fencing. Borrowing the basic design of the fencing mask and adding a forehead and chin rest to help absorb the impact of a ball, Thayer devised a protective mask for his catcher and instructed a local tinsmith to create the device. The result was the first-ever catcher’s mask, the very one that can be viewed as part of the Hall of Fame’s traveling exhibit, Baseball As America.

While the mask was experimented with during the winter of 1876-1877, it was not until April 12 of that year that Tyng donned the strange contraption in a regular-season game. The following week, The Harvard Crimson commented that “the new mask was proved a complete success, since it entirely protects the face and head and adds greatly to the confidence of the catcher, who need not feel that he is every moment in danger of a life-long injury. To the ingenious inventor of this mask we are largely indebted for the excellent playing of our new catcher, who promises to excel the fine playing of those who have previously held this position.”

Initially, Tyng wore the mask only when he crept up close behind the plate, generally when there were two strikes on the batter and it was necessary to field the potential third strike on the fly. It soon became apparent that it was more practical to keep the mask on at all times. By 1878, Thayer had received a patent on his invention, and catchers throughout the country, including the top catchers in professional baseball, were soon wearing the device. That same year, the A.G. Spalding and Brothers Company, the leading sporting goods dealer of the era, began not only selling “Thayer’s Patent Harvard Catcher’s Mask,” but also their own version of the mask. Asking price: $3.00.

The modern-day catcher’s mask, with its advanced design comprised of lightweight yet strong materials, offers unparalleled protection to the man behind the plate. Though today’s mask is a far cry from the ancestral “bird cage” of the 1870s, we should remember, it is a tool of ingenuity, not ignorance.