Superman & Baseball

I was recently rereading my copy of Superman # 215. The main story, “Superman’s Tragic Marriage”, is, for my money, one of the best Superman stories ever told. It’s fraught with psychological yumminess.

But that’s not what this entry is about. It’s about the back-up story, “Superman’s First Exploit”. On the first page, after the splash panel, there is a two-panel depiction of Superman throwing a baseball from Metropolis to Japan to open their baseball season.

Now, my first reaction upon seeing this, as it is with many of the things I’ve seen in old Superman comics, was, “Awesome! Superman just threw the opening pitch of a Japanese baseball game from Metropolis! Kick-Ass!”

My second reaction was, wouldn’t the ball be travelling at such a velocity as to kill the catcher?

I pointed this out to my wife, who then pointed out to me that it is daylight in Metropolis when the ball is thrown, and it is daylight in Japan when the ball arrives. Which I found to immediately be a much more interesting discrepency.

Now, with Metropolis on the eastern seabord of the U.S., that makes for a difference of eight hours by my count. So, for the ball to land in Japan with similiar daylight conditions as to Metropolis, it would have to take eight hours to get there, right?

But the text strongly implies that the throw is nearly simultaneous. How, then, do we make up for the eight hours?

I’m not asking this in the spirit of, “Oh, look at the mistake in this old Silver Age comic”, because I love old Silver Age comics. I ask this in the vein of, “boy, wouldn’t it be fun to come up with an explanation for this”.

==Tom

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Mr. Mambo says: “EVERYBODY MAMBO!”

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Oh No! Tom’s posting something political!

I am hard at work on a good many articles for your consumption, including the second part of The Nineties: Were They Really That Bad?: Howard Mackie, which should be coming soonish.

==Tom

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