Thomas Edison Lights Up Ty Cobb!

Thomas Edison Lights Up Ty Cobb!

Famous inventor Thomas Edison was a very dedicated baseball fan. The Thomas A. Edison film company captured the first known baseball game footage on May 20, 1898. The film was taken by a camera positioned behind home plate and shows 27 seconds of a game being played. Edison also threw out the first pitch at several major league ballparks. He could name every player on every major league baseball team. At Edison Field in Brooklyn, he supported two semipro teams, the Edisons and the Voltas. And Thomas Edison enjoyed another significant link to baseball. In 1922-23, the Edison Portland Cement Company provided over 30,000 cubic yards of concrete to build Yankee Stadium.

A part-time resident of Fort Myers, Florida, Thomas Edison was thrilled when the Philadelphia Athletics selected the tropical town for annual training camp. In 1926, 80-year-old Edison visited the Fair Grounds and accepted an invitation from Kid Gleason to hit with Connie Mack catching (used Micky Cochrane’s glove). Edison popped Kid’s pitch over first base. Joe Hauser wasn’t in position but the ball would have sailed over his head anyway.

A year later, on March 7, 1927, Ty Cobb was in Fort Myers for his first day in an Athletics uniform. A motor car pulled up to the third base line and the white-haired inventor stepped down from the running board. Edison and Cobb were both wealthy stock investors and got along well. A baseball agreement was struck. Edison would borrow one of Al Simmon’s big bats and Cobb would pitch. Not thinking an elderly man twice his age (Cobb was 40) could do much, Cobb moved up half-way to home plate and lobbed a pitch. Edison connected and smashed a liner off Cobb’s shoulder knocking him to the ground. As Cobb picked himself up and shook hands with a smiling Edison, fans cried “sign him up!”