Lorenzo "Larry" J. Ponza Jr. (February 15, 1918 – December 15, 2004) was the inventor of the modern

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

pitching machine A pitching machine is a machine that automatically pitches a baseball to a batter at different speeds and styles. Most machines are hand-fed, but there are some that automatically feed. There are multiple types of pitching machines; softball, ba ...

. He grew up in the Santa Cruz area of

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

near a

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logging, logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes ...

which was operated by his parents. He graduated from high school in 1934 and, according to him, continued his education in the "School of Hard Knocks and Experience". In 1941 he moved to

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Reci ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

and worked as a senior civilian supervisor for the

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

production control Within supply chain management and manufacturing, production control is the activity of monitoring and Control (management), controlling any particular production or operation. Production control is often run from a specific control room or operati ...

office. His first pitching machine, the Power Pitcher, was invented in

1952 Events January–February * January 26 – Cairo Fire, Black Saturday in Kingdom of Egypt, Egypt: Rioters burn Cairo's central business district, targeting British and upper-class Egyptian businesses. * February 6 ** Princess Elizabeth, ...

. He followed this up with many improvements, including the 1974 Hummer, which could simulate

fastball The fastball is the most common type of pitch (baseball), pitch thrown by pitchers in baseball and softball. Its distinctive feature is its high speed. "Power pitchers," such as former major leaguers Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens, relied on the ...

s, pop-ups and grounders, the Casey (1983), the Ponza Swing King (1987) and the Rookie (1988). He sold his company to the Athletic Training Equipment Company in the early 1990s. He died at age 86 from a

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

-related illness. In

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

, a popular online newspaper, Telégrafo del Sur, published a comic called "The news adventures of Lorenzo Ponza" in honor of him.

External links

The adventures of Ponza
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ponza, Lorenzo 1918 births 2004 deaths Deaths from cancer Baseball developers 20th-century American inventors