THE INVENTOR

Author

Matthew Garringer
September 19, 2023

Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The daily newsletter that takes you back in time on a baseball adventure.

Let’s dive in.

Today’s story is about the greatest inventor in baseball history.

Most people don’t know the name Danny Litwhiler.

Honestly, I’d never heard of the guy until I started researching him for this piece.

Litwhiler was an All-Star, a two-time Gold Glove winner and a World Series champion.

He spent 12 years in the big leagues as a player with the Phillies, Reds, Cardinals and Braves.

But his accomplishments on the field are really a footnote compared to his overall contribution to the game.

During his second season with the Phillies in ‘41, Litwhiler came up with his first great idea.

That year, he had done very well at the plate - hitting .305 with a .350 OBP and 18 bombs.

He also made 15 errors in the outfield.

“I may be wrong,” he said in ‘05, “but I think that my glove was the first one that had the fingers tied together by rawhide.”

The next season, Litwhiler proceeded to go the entire year without making an error and he only made one in ‘43.

Naturally, they put his glove in the Hall of Fame.

After playing in the MLB, he spent many years as a college coach - nine seasons at FSU, and 19 at Michigan State.

During that period, he developed two of his greatest inventions: The JUGS Radar Gun, and Diamond Dust.

The Jugs Radar Gun

In the fall of ‘74, while coaching Michigan State, Danny got inspired by a campus news story about a cop using a radar gun to catch speeders.

Police had been using radar guns since the '60s.

He brought that cop to the baseball field to time his pitchers.

They found one guy throwing 75-80 mph on flat ground and five mph faster on the mound – sounded about right.

Litwhiler teamed up with John Paulson, the brain behind the JUGS Curveball Pitching Machine, and they cooked up a battery-powered prototype that became the JUGS Speed Gun.

He wrote to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn to tell him what he’d discovered.

“The purpose of this letter is to reveal a discovery I recently made that every organization should know about if they have not made the same discovery. I originally thought I should notify the club presidents but decided it might be best through your office. My writing directly to each organization might be viewed as some crackpot idea. If you believe this to be true, please discard the letter.”

The next year, big league teams were using the JUGS Speedgun in Spring Training.

Diamond Dust and Diamond Grit

Tallahassee gets quite a bit of rain.

So, when Litwhiler was coaching at FSU, he had some real rain-related headaches.

The outfield grass would often soak baseballs, ruining them, and he didn't like having to postpone practices or games because the infield was too soggy to play on.

He discovered that using Fuller's earth or calcined clay could help.

Danny called this stuff "diamond dust," and it worked wonders in drying out baseballs, which saved FSU's baseball program a boatload of cash.

He also came up with "diamond grit”, which could be sprinkled on wet infield spots to speed up their drying process.

To this day, big league teams still use a variation of "diamond grit" to keep their infields dry.

Overall, Litwhiler came up with over 100 innovations for the game.

He also did some cool stuff as the international president of the United States Baseball Federation from '77 to '82.

He played a big part in getting baseball into the Olympics.

The list really goes on and on - there’s not enough room in one email for this guy.

Dan passed in 2011 at the ripe age of 95, but his impact on our sport will be felt forever.

PIECES OF THE GAME

From time to time, our friends at Steiner Sports run some pretty good discounts, and some of these deals today are epic.

At the moment, pretty much the entire website is up to 30% off.

Even this signed photo of Danny Litwhiler from his playing days is on sale.

Here's a few other things you might like:

The deal ends at midnight, so prices may change tomorrow.

STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why?

Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

Woody played for Danny Litwhiler at FSU back in the day.

He didn’t have the best numbers at the big league level, but he contributed and found a way to stick around for nine years.

Without a doubt, the most bizarre thing that ever happened to him on the field was the time when he was almost hit by a sack of flour that fell from the sky at Dodger Stadium.

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

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