Tag: baseball

Mr. October in April, or May, or August

On By Jeff KatzIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Induction weekend in Cooperstown is the best baseball bash of the year. For me, it’s a house full of friends and family, an always fun porch party filled with baseball talk, pizza, and beer, and any number of surprises. One year, Bill Lee appeared on my porch!

Last year, Todd Radom, the foremost sports graphic designer in the country, author, and all-around mensch and good friend, was a last-minute addition to the festivities as part of the Dick Allen contingent. Todd’s arrival was the first great surprise heading into the weekeånd.

On Saturday, Todd and I strolled to Main Street, a few minutes’ walk from my house. A stop into Yastrzemski Sports was preordained. Yaz Sports is the perfect local card store. They have everything from high-end to low-end. My favorite place to look in is the $5 bin. You never know what’ll be there. 

When Baseball Nostalgia, another legendary card shop, closed in Cooperstown, some of its inventory found its way to Yaz. Baseball Nostalgia was created as a flagship store for TCMA/SSPC cards in the 1970’s, and some of the original snapshots from the cards would find their way into the cheapie section. 

While browsing and chatting, I came across this photo of Reggie Jackson, which I assumed was from the Baseball Nostalgia archives. It’s a cool shot of Reggie as an Oriole, and that was enough for me. Until Todd and I got back home and sat at the kitchen table.

What was this picture, and why was it taken? Reggie spent the summer of 1976 in Baltimore, so that’s interesting, maybe enough to warrant bringing your camera to the game, maybe not. The key was in the background; Todd, as expected, clearly saw that the Oakland A’s were in town! Now that is worth recording – Reggie, in his new home, playing his old team. It seemed exciting to me, though clearly less to the sparse crowd at Memorial Stadium. 

I was quickly obsessed. When was this taken? When did the A’s come to Baltimore?

The first scheduled visit for the A’s was a three-game homestand between April 30-May 2. It was a big deal, and NBC had it featured as the Game of the Week, hoping Reggie would play. He had started the season late, a spring holdout for $200,000 per year from Oakland leading to a trade to Baltimore on April 2 and a delayed start to his season. Reggie probably sat out Friday night thinking that his first game of the season should be before a national audience!

Best laid plans, and so on. The game was rained out and rescheduled as part of a May 2 doubleheader. 

Todd and I tried to identify some of the players in the background as a starting point. We spotted Phil Garner, but that was no help. Garner played in every one of the A’s-O’s games. In the outfield was a player with a single-digit uniform number. Probably Bill North, but again, no help. It could also have been Cesar Tovar or Denny Walling, but that didn’t get us any further.

As our focus alternated between Retrosheet boxscores of all of the April games the A’s played in Baltimore and the photograph, we saw, relatively clearly, a lefty pitcher in the middle of the picture. Now we were getting somewhere. That could only be reliever Paul Lindblad. That was important and the key clue.

Obviously, our photographer recognized the historical import of Reggie’s first game against the only team he’d ever played for, got a fantastic seat behind the Orioles dugout, and took a great photo of Reggie. The photo had to have been taken before the bottom of the 5th, 6th, or 7th, when Lindblad would have been around the mound as the Orioles got ready to bat. Mystery solved!

But was it? I wasn’t so sure. The bleachers are nearly empty, and the stated attendance for the May 2 doubleheader was 24,819, pretty solid for Baltimore, though you’d expect more for Reggie’s first appearance against the A’s. Maybe people had left, tired after Game 1, but by the 5th inning? No way. Also, the sunset that day was at 8:01, and it’s clearly nighttime. Mystery unsolved!

The A’s returned to Maryland for a three-game stand from August 23-25. Vida Blue, a lefty, pitched a complete game shutout in Game 1, but Blue wasn’t a white lefty. The 23rd was easily eliminated. 

On the 24th, Lindblad pitched, the only lefty appearing in a game that saw both Mike Torrez and Stan Bahnsen pitch for Oakland. Attendance was abysmal, 9,482, so that checks. And it was a night game!

The 25th was easy to ignore. It was a righty-only night of pitchers for Oakland – Paul Mitchell, Dick Bosman, and Jim Todd. 

This photo was taken on August 24, entering either the bottom of the 8th or 9th inning. Reggie was headed to the dugout for the Orioles’ turn at bat. Mystery re-solved!

Reggie, looking right at the camera, and me, knew I’d get it all along.

Which Game Did You See?

On By zinnbeckIn Stadiums4 Comments

By Cary Smith

I was working in the SABR-Rucker collection, trying to add missing information, and I came across the photograph above. When I searched the internet, I found it had previously been identified as Game 3 of the 1943 World Series at Yankee Stadium. After reexamining the photograph, I realized it is neither from 1943 nor from the World Series. I will go step-by-step to show the research done to determine which game this photograph is from. To all my school math teachers who said, “Please show your work.” Well, here it is.

The first task was to confirm that it is Yankee Stadium. The facing of the second deck, featuring rectangular designs and numbered sections, clearly distinguishes it as Yankee Stadium.

The biggest clue that the photograph is not from the 1943 World Series came from the bunting hanging on the facing of the third deck.

This photograph shows a well-known incident that occurred during Game 1 of the 1943 World Series when a plane flew over Yankee Stadium. Overlayed with the red border is the bunting from our photograph. The bunting in our photograph includes pennants with stars and stripes hanging down, whereas the bunting in the 1943 photograph does not. So our photograph is probably not from 1943.

I started looking to see if I could find images of the Yankee Stadium bunting for other World Series of that era. After examining photographs from several World Series in which the Yankees participated, I was able to rule out 1939, 1942, and 1943 based on the bunting. This photograph from the October 3, 1941, Daily News proved to be a match to the bunting from our photograph. So our photograph has to be from the 1941 World Series, right? Well no. Let’s see how that was determined.

It took some work to rule out the 1941 World Series. Only Games 1 and 2 were played at Yankee Stadium, which helped narrow down the amount of information I needed to be weeded out. I wanted to determine which team was in the field and which team was batting, so I looked closer at the pitcher on the mound. The pitcher is wearing a New York Yankees uniform. With this in mind, we can begin examining the other players on the field and matching them up with play-by-play game records.

When looking at our photograph, I can tell that the play started with runners on first and third base. The batter hit the ball to the shortstop, who flipped the ball to the second baseman for what was probably a double play. Using Baseball-Reference.com, I searched the play-by-play records for the first two games of the World Series to identify a matching situation. Runners on first and third, and a 6-4-3 double play by the visiting team. I found nothing! Coming up blank, I started to look more closely at the players and their uniform numbers.

I focused on the Yankees’ second baseman and the runner heading to second base. Refer to the photo in question with magnified insets below. The Yankees’ second baseman is wearing number 6, which matches up with Joe Gordon. However, Gordon played in five World Series with the Yankees: 1938, 1939, 1941, 1942, and 1943. The unknown base runner is wearing number 3. The player who wore number 3 for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1941 World Series was Pete Coscarart. Great, except for the fact that Coscarart did not play in Game 1 or 2 of that year’s World Series. That ruled out Coscarart. Checking the teams that played in the World Series against the Yankees in 1938, 1939, 1942, and 1943, and the players that wore number 3 for those teams, also ruled out those years.

I started thinking about other games besides the World Series that might have bunting around the field. They would normally bring out the bunting on opening day and maybe on the Fourth of July. I delved into the Yankees’ 1941 home opener, which was played against the Philadelphia Athletics on April 15. Looking at the boxscore, I found Joe Gordon played second base for the Yankees, so that fits, and Pete Suder wore number 3 for the Athletics, so that fits.

A jersey number that had escaped me was that of the first base coach. He is wearing number 27. Since Baseball-Reference does not list the jersey numbers of coaches, I looked on eBay until I found a 1941 Philadelphia Athletics scorecard. There, I found that Coach Earle Mack wore number 27, another match for our photograph. See the scorecard just below with a magnified inset from the photo in question.

Looking back at Baseball-Reference for the play-by-play of the 1941 New York Yankees home opener, we find the Athletics hit into two double plays. One by Al Brancato in the Top of the 5th inning and one by Eddie Collins Jr. in the top of the 6th inning.

The double play hit by Brancato is interesting because Pete Suder is the runner on first base. However, according to this play-by-play, Dick Siebert is on second base, and we are looking for a runner on third base. Could Siebert really have run from second base almost all the way to home plate as shown in our photograph? Even with a running start, could Siebert have gone that far?

So close and just one mystery to solve in Dick Siebert. Then I found the missing piece in the April 16 edition of the Morning Post Newspaper (Camden, NJ). “Siebert led off with a double and gained third as Chapman grounded out.” The play-by-play on Baseball-Reference was incomplete; Siebert was on third base, not second base, when Brancato hit into a double play. (Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet have already been informed about the new information) Now all the pieces fit. The bunting on the grandstand was from 1941, not 1943. Pete Suder was the runner wearing jersey number 3 on his way to second base. Al Brancato did hit into a 6-4-3 double play. And Dick Siebert was on third base, not second base.

Conclusion: The photograph is not from Game 3 of the 1943 World Series at Yankee Stadium as originally described. It is from the April 15, 1941 Yankee Stadium home opener against the Philadelphia Athletics.

Find the Al Brancato Hits into Double Play Photograph in the SABR-Rucker collection.