Washington Senators catcher Gabby Street was the first to catch a baseball from the Washington Monument in 1908. His feat sparked even more daring attempts.
“The ball, it is thought, would not be going as fast as many that are taken readily by the infielders in a game of ball, but there are other matters to be considered which would make the test more difficult,” the Washington Evening Star posited in a story about McLaughlin’s wager. “If Hines should attempt to catch it, he would probably have more trouble judging it than catching it.”
, saying the second ball he dropped landed in Schriver’s mitt but popped out. By 1906, when Hines recounted his unsuccessful 1885 attempt in The Post, Schriver’s catch was no longer recognized as legitimate. The crowd “greeted the wonderful stunt with a cheer that made ripples on the Potomac” as Street, wearing slacks, a dress shirt and a dark tie, held the ball from his historic grab aloft.
“The players are laughing yet over the stunt,” the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported. “It seems that Robbie thought the missile was a baseball, and insisted on showing the gang how he used to catch a ball in old Oriole days, when the fruit struck him and spattered him all over, and he thought he was mortally wounded, and insisted that the juice was blood. … It will be several years before the manager lives down his nickname of Grapefruit Robbie.”Babe Ruth wasn’t above such high jinks.
“There was nothin’ to it,” Helf said. “I just kept my eye on the ball all the way down. It didn’t come any harder than a fast pitch.” “Joe Sprinz is in a hospital with his face held together with surgical wire, because he tried to catch a baseball falling at a speed of 145 miles an hour — and failed,” UPI reported Aug. 3, 1939. “Sprinz was seeking to establish one of those mythical records by catching a baseball dropped 800 feet from a blimp cruising over the sports field at the San Francisco exposition.
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