subscribeThis is my Valentine to Baseball. And what better day to post than the opening of the 2009 Season, the Dodgers vs. Giants!
These are photographs taken with a stereoscopic camera. They were shot at the Polo Grounds(IV), dated 1951-52, I am not really sure. But what I do know is that the Great Willie Mays is playing, Bobby “The Shot Heard Round the World” Thomson is playing and Leo “The Lip” Durocher is managing the New York Giants. This Giants’ roster also included Sal “The Barber” Maglie, famous for throwing “chin music”, hence the legacy, effectual, close shave.
My grandfather is the photographer and my grandmother is the silver haired lady with the best sunglasses on the planet! They were friends of the Durochers and when Leo came to California to coach the Dodgers, I too, got to sit behind home plate and get a close-up view of Don Drysdale go into a complete meltdown. The drama was spectacular!!! And I was hooked.
This post marks a bit of new technology for Times Quotidian, a Slideshow. So click on any image and you can thumb through the slideshow. Please spend some time with the captions. They contain many play by play details.
I was excited to read this morning’s L.A. Times sports section and preview the opening day games. But this post makes me even more thrilled about the coming of Spring and the thrill of the game of baseball. I’m not only blown away by the vintage stereoscopic pics, but by the perfect play-by-play captions for the slideshow. Bravo, Nancy!
Wonderfully evocative photos. They and the post are full of names familiar to Frank and me, brought to us by our father, a baseball fan if there ever was one. Thanks for the memories.
[...] some history of the diamond. When my brother Frank sent me a link to a post by Nancy Cantwell about baseball outing in the 1950s to Polo Grounds, I jumped to [...]
These are stunning. Why don’t people dress like this anymore?
I love the charm and class that past pictures give events and am curious if photos from the current time period will exude the same qualities or if new technology will strip it away.
LOVELY photos. Don’t know if it’s a help but I can assure you that images 1-2, and 6-10 are from the Polo Grounds during the 1951 season. You can tell by the patch on both Durocher’s and Mays’ sleeve, dating the 75th anniversary of the National League. So, with that in mind, those shots are depicting Mays as a rookie, and the Giants during their magic run. Image 3 is definitely of Yankee Stadium, either from 1951 or 1952 (the Gem razor advert was the same for both seasons). The 4th and 5th ones are actually from Wrigley Field in LA, which was home to the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League for a time, though I’m unsure of the date.
Hope this helps!! And really, thank you again for posting these!!