Few people have had a greater impact on modern living than Thomas Edison. Can you imagine a life without recorded music, movies, or light bulbs? Impossible. Several companies and industries can trace their roots to Edison, and he’s justifiably celebrated as the world’s most prolific inventor.
Today, many of Edison’s achievements, no matter how great or small, are woven into society and taken for granted, just like the air we breathe. Not appreciating his contributions doesn’t lessen their significance; it’s simply the nature of things, since we rarely keep at the forefront what has become mundane.
If Cooper played today, there’s no doubt he’d be called a “throwback.” Folks would marvel at his work ethic, the absence of batting gloves, his simple black spikes, the pants extending barely below the knees, the overuse of sir and ma’am, and the sprinting to first on walks and to the dugout on outs.
Likewise, if Cooper played today, those same people wouldn’t give a second glance at how he makes a turn at first base or at his headfirst slides. They wouldn’t mention them, because today every player does them. But when Cooper played, nobody did.
In his lifetime, Cooper never applied for a patent, so he’ll always remain more than a thousand behind Edison. They do share similarities though. Both were self-taught, both were raised in the Midwest, and both focused on practical ways to improve whatever was in front of them. The result for Edison was the commercialization of hundreds of ideas. And for Cooper it was nothing short of revolutionizing what a baseball player can do on the diamond.
While Edison had an army of engineers and scientists on his team, his reputation would lead one to believe he was a singular force, a lone genius in a laboratory. In stark contrast, Cooper had the reputation of the ultimate teammate. As McOwen was fond of saying, "Cooper played his guts out for the name on the front of his jersey, not the one on the back."
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The only thing well known about Cannon Cooper is there's little known about Cannon Cooper. Few artifacts remain from his playing days. And if those relics were assembled in one place, about all you’d glean is his shoe and hat size, and that clay is impossible to get out of a uniform. Newspaper box scores chronicled daily successes and failures in simple numbers. And the accompanying articles highlighted the effort and entertainment that the numbers couldn’t have revealed on their own.
Periodically, Cooper wrote letters to his father. Unfortunately, their enthusiastic content rarely went beyond the stadium, casting only a dim light on his inner workings.
July 24 -- Fun game today against the Redbirds. Three doubles for me plus a hard lineout to left field. My buddy, Max Chesterfield, hit an upper-decker; a shot to the moon! Most importantly, we won 6-2. A good game on both sides. They played hard, we played hard; and this time we were the better team.
After today, I think a double is the perfect hit. You hit a pitch down the line or in the gap and you know you have a shot at two? Yes sir, that gets my motor running!
This season, I’m doing something new. When it feels like a double is possible, I start to make my turn as soon as soon I get out of the box. It helps me get to second faster and on a straight line. The guys are calling it a “banana turn,” and a couple of them are doing it too.
Even though I’m doing my “banana turn,” my momentum is still carrying me into right field. Unlike running straight down the line on a grounder, you can really feel the churning. And the harder you’re churning, the harder you to have to fight the momentum that is pulling you farther and farther from second base. You’re fighting and churning and fighting and churning – and watching the throw come in from the outfield.
What a way to end a play, a race between ball and man! Sometimes it’s a race I lose, but today I won it three times. All of them end the same way: a headfirst slide into second and a cloud of dust.
I know that hitting a home run is hard. Heck, getting any sort of hit is hard. But doubles are hard and they feel like you've done something extra. I guess they feel more earned. A day’s work squeezed into seven seconds. And at the end, when you’re safe and standing on second and panting like Seabiscuit, it feels pure and good and as holy as anything on a baseball field.
A humble letter from a son to a father describing a day’s work. Of course the son happened to be the world’s most talented baseball player. And the day’s work included two things that baseball players had never done and baseball fans had never seen.
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Cooper ran unbelievably fast. If he went straight to first on a double and then made a left turn, his trajectory would be impossibly wide, basically sending him to centerfield instead of second. The traditional “buttonhook” turn at first base – when the runner gently departs the baseline as he approaches the bag, allowing him to adjust his path before accelerating again, much like the function of a highway on-ramp – was impractical for him. Since he was always at top speed well before reaching first, the buttonhook required him to dramatically throttle his effort in order to execute it.
Speed was his advantage. To fully exploit it, he needed to invent a new approach for a two-base hit.
The banana turn was a simple solution to a simple problem. On a straight line, the trip from home to second is 180 feet. However, on a double, players travel more than 200 feet because their momentum pushes them toward right field. It’s just plain physics.
Cooper figured he'd add the extra distance at the beginning of the trip because he was moving more slowly. So, on any sharp hit to the outfield he started making an arc almost immediately out of the batter’s box. By the time he hit the inside corner of first base, he was pointed directly at second and moving at top speed.
A simple solution to a simple problem that nobody had ever bothered solving. However, after Cooper logged over fifty doubles in a season, the banana turn became embedded into the fabric of play. Today, virtually every player runs far outside the first base line on a solid hit to the outfield.
The inaugural headfirst slide was a different animal. Beyond increased injury risks, the most popular theory behind their absence was the notion that headfirst slides were ungentlemanly; a salute to the long-standing "manners" precedent in baseball. For example, in the sport's earliest days, hitters could request that pitchers throw the ball high or low; and the pitchers had to oblige!
Curveballs were introduced in the late 1800s. There were no rules forbidding them, and early claims of mysticism gave way to complaints that curveballs were unsportsmanlike because the pitcher was deceiving the hitter. In fact, the president of Harvard University forbade his players to employ them for that very reason.
As with the curveball, Cooper knew there was nothing in the rulebook forbidding the headfirst slide, only that nobody had ever done it. And he couldn't understand how a sport that embraced spitting and cursing – two activities that are inappropriate anywhere but a baseball field – could find a headfirst slide unacceptable.
“We’ve always done it this way,” is a common refrain in clubhouses, dugouts, and front offices. Since the early game didn’t incorporate headfirst slides, and the great base stealers like Cobb and Collins went feet first, nobody thought to make a change. Except Cooper.
The first time he executed the slide in a game, he was hustling from first to third on a single to right field. It was a hard hit and the fielder expertly played the ball and delivered a perfect throw to the home plate side of the bag, the exact spot where he believed Cooper’s foot would reach.
As Cooper accelerated from second to third, he heard the third-base coach yelling, “Down! Down!”
Still speeding, he extended both arms and then launched like a torpedo, skimming the ground several yards from the base. Low. Smooth. Silent.
That day’s attendance was 23,419; all of them gasped in unison. A few even fainted, certain they'd witnessed a fatality.
The third baseman caught the perfect throw and swiped at the spot where Cooper’s foot was supposed to meet his glove. Of course neither Cooper, nor his foot, were there.
With the heel of his left hand, Cooper reached for the other corner of the bag. When it made contact, he kept his elbow slightly bent to absorb the momentum of his slide. His torso eventually covered much of the base, and he remained motionless in that pioneering position, ensuring he never lost contact with the base.
The opposing manager popped out of the dugout like he was launched from a circus cannon. In forty years of baseball, he never saw a player slide any way other than feet first. It had to be against the rules!
The umpire was understandably stunned. He had a front row seat to baseball’s version of the first-ever slam-dunk. He gasped too.
The manager continued to approach the scene of the supposed crime.
The umpire leaned in toward the base.
With the opposing manager stomping ever closer, the ump swallowed hard.
“Safe!”
Twenty three thousand sounded like a million. The opposing manager started flailing his arms at an invisible swarm of bees, arguing for a full ten minutes with one umpire, then two, then three.
Order was restored and the game eventually resumed. Cooper promptly stole home on the very next play. Headfirst.
Long after the game, in a nearly empty clubhouse, Cooper's best friend on the team, Wedgie Horowitz, asked him why he chose to dive into third. He didn't expect much of an answer, since Cooper rarely revealed why he did anything; he just did them.
His reply surprised them both. "Wedgie," he said, "nobody flies feet first in their dreams."