Lew Fonseca

Biography

A major league baseball player for 12 seasons, he won the American League batting title as a first baseman in 1929 - the highlight of a career plagued by injuries. Starting out as a second baseman with the Cincinnati Reds, his life took a surprising turn after joining the Cleveland Indians when his baseball career crossed paths with the developing motion picture industry. While appearing in Slide, Kelly, Slide (1927), he became fascinated with film and immediately developed a great interest in the ways the medium could be used to both improve and promote the game of baseball. He was named manager of the Chicago White Sox in 1932, and began using film to analyze his team and to look for ways to eliminate weaknesses and flaws in their play. After he was dismissed as manager in 1934, he went on to serve both major leagues as a director of promotions, creating films which studied and celebrated the sport and which were used throughout the world to teach fundamentals of the game to young players.