Some Advice on Batting Practice from 1964

For reasons sufficient unto myself, I have been reading a rich tome entitled The Fine Art of Baseball by Lew Watts. It was published in 1964, and I purchased it at a library sale. Library sales, of course, are a sign that the city you live in is going out of business.

In any event, my spirited perusals of Mr. Watts’s book led me to the following championship passage, which is on the subject of batting practice and the systemization thereof:

You see, after the balls strike the Heavy Curtain of Asbestos they do indeed “drop harmlessly to the floor.” But what of the carcinogenic flotsam they dislodge and help take to wing? That scarcely merits mentioning.

This is because in 1964 batting practice was, among teams with no access to nets, known colloquially as “cancer practice.”