In 1961, Tony Smith created Spitball in two variations as a commission from M. Knoedler & Company and The Friends of Modern Art at the Detroit Institute of Art. This version of Spitball is number ten from an edition of fifty executed in black marble. A monumental version of the sculpture was fabricated in steel in an edition of three and can currently be viewed in the public collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Rice University and Case Western Reserve University.