Air Sweeps Dust off Home Plate (Nov, 1939)
Air Sweeps Dust off Home Plate
Baseball umpires can throw away their whisk brooms if an automatic home-plate duster recently invented is generally adopted. When the device is placed in operation, a valve built into the plate rises and a blast of compressed air sweeps it clean of dust and dirt, as shown in the photograph below.
Nice to see that within 60 days of Germany invading Poland, we have this silly invention.
And it saves so much labor with that whisk-broom.
I guess taking 3 seconds to manually dust off home plate was just too much work for some umpires.
I recall that Comiskey Park in Chicago had something like this installed in the early ’60s. It must have been in use elsewhere in the major leagues.
I’m a huge sports fan and have read alot of articles. But I had never heard of this. Can you imagine this thing malfunctioning when someone was sliding home. Ouch. Ruin a foot, ankle, knee or head. Bad idea. Some things need to be done manually.