We Guarantee No One Will Have One Of These At Tahoe!
Here batter batter!
There sure are alotta fancy classic boats out on Lake Tahoe this weekend at the big International Show. But no one, and I mean no one will have a Baseball crammed in their E-X-H-A-U-S-T pipe like this one from fellow Woody Boater Mark Setterholm. The story goes, they were starting starting to disassemble a 1952 CC U-22 at the shop (Marks birthday boat) and found this!
???????????????,??????? or a ????????, Maybe it’s ???????????
What for gods sake is this there for? Anyone know any old tricks of the trade here. mark lives in Minnesota, so was this some sort of winterizing thing? Anyone? Beuler? Anyone got any idears? Is the ball at least period correct?
To keep small animals from crawling up and into the engine. I can’t tell you how many I’ve cranked up over the years that have been sitting to blow a mouse nest across the shop.
But I will say I think they pushed it in a little to far.
The Smiths invented the first exhaust driven batting machine. This is the reason even Babe Ruth owned a Chris Craft!
The story would go like this. A mischievous young lad, around the age of 9, was messing around in the garage. He rolled a baseball up the exhaust pipe of his dad’s boat “just to see what would happen.”. Upon lodging the ball in the exhaust, he became scared and tried everything to get it out. He was too scared to tell his dad, so he left it. Spring comes and the boat won’t run. Dad parks it and says “I’ll get to it later”. There it sits in the garage for the next 40 years until Mark discovers said baseball.
That’s my guess.
I’m going with this story…
I see a faint blue line across the ball. It was either autographed by Ted Williams or Chris Smith.
This works as a high speed governor which was most likely installed for teaching teenage drivers.
Long cold winter in land of 10000 lakes, kids in barn with boat in storage playing catch. Johnny says ” bet you can’t throw that ball from across the barn and hit the exhaust pipe”
Nope, don’t see anything like that out here in Tahoe, but “Joltin’ Joe’s boat is here.
Given to Joe Di Maggio on October 1, 1949 during “Joe Di Maggio Day, the prestige of the boat was elevated when he took Marilyn for a ride around San Francisco Bay on their wedding day in 1954. Donated to the City of Martinez, Ca (DiMaggio’s hometown), fell into disrepair until it was rescued by the local Sons of Italy Chapter, and they raised $70,000 and the participation of the Carpenter’s Union, and restored the boat with volunteer labor.
They did a very nice job!
Anti-theft device for when the owner wasn’t home.
The accompanying baseball bat was the anti-theft device for when the owner was home.
Just a guess.
That boat has balls !!
Likely what Jim G said. Dad used to put a rubber ball in the end of the pipe on race cars when I was a child. You can see the the red “remove before flight” ribbon in this photo. Dad was ex Air Force & they used these ribbons on planes. There was also a set of 4 rubber balls on a chain that were placed in the injector stacks.
I’m guessing it was an attempt to prevent backflow of incoming water.