Baseball: Individual Play and Team Strategy

8vo. Black cloth with gilt spine lettering. xx, 278pp. Frontispiece, illustrations, graphs. Very good. Faint edgewear. Tight, nice 6th printing of the only book penned by this early Major Leagues pitcher and later college baseball coach (1882-1957). Connie Mack and Grantland Rice each provide brief introductions. Portion of front jacket flap neatly tipped to front flyleaf. Interestingly, front and rear pastedowns each bear ownership signature of William H. Groves, long-time Professor of Physical Education for Men and coach at Eastern Illinois University (1951-1969). Amusingly, on one leaf he lightly pencils a contradiction to Coombs' "correct swing of the bat" advice ("The swing of the bat should be level, parallel to the ground"), stating: "no! it should be slightly upward to squarely meet the ball decending [sic] at an angle." Fun copy of an uncommon title -- a volume in the "Prentice-Hall Health and Sports Series.".