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Post by Lark11 on Apr 24, 2014 23:59:30 GMT -5
Christy Mathewson drops-and-drives during the 1911 World Series: Some random observations: Big Six's lead arm is in a very strange position. The hitter is holding the bat way down low, looks like he's ready to hit a cricket pitch.
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Post by psuhistory on Apr 25, 2014 11:16:35 GMT -5
I haven't seen this photo before, great stuff. Polo Grounds impresses as usual: mammoth park, just look at the foul grounds. Mathewson was unusual in advising young pitchers to conserve energy by taking it easy at particular points during the game, against the bottom of the order, for example. This may have reflected the greater variation of talent in the League during the early 1900s; in any case, it's not advice anyone would give nowadays. But this is obviously a photo of Mathewson trying his hardest…
Interesting point about the hitter. Collins, Baker, and Lapp were the lefties in the Philadelphia order (Coombs, the pitcher, was a switch-hitter). Mathewson was known for quick-pitching, but he usually did it to keep runners close to first base. There's no one on first here...
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Post by Lark11 on Apr 25, 2014 11:31:21 GMT -5
I haven't seen this photo before, great stuff. Polo Grounds impresses as usual: mammoth park, just look at the foul grounds. Mathewson was unusual in advising young pitchers to conserve energy by taking it easy at particular points during the game, against the bottom of the order, for example. This may have reflected the greater variation of talent in the League during the early 1900s; in any case, it's not advice anyone would give nowadays. But this is obviously a photo of Mathewson trying his hardest… Interesting point about the hitter. Collins, Baker, and Lapp were the lefties in the Philadelphia order (Coombs, the pitcher, was a switch-hitter). Mathewson was known for quick-pitching, but he usually did it to keep runners close to first base. There's no one on first here... Yeah, evidently it's a Baseball Hall of Fame image that Keith Olbermann and Bob Costas "geeked out" over when they saw it.
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Post by kinsm on Apr 25, 2014 16:43:23 GMT -5
"Baseball History" The Padres are promoting Kevin Quakenbush, that may be the greatest baseball name ever....
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Post by Lark11 on Apr 28, 2014 20:42:07 GMT -5
"First ever game at Crosley (Redland Field) in Cincinnati. April 11, 1912. Day after the Titanic set sail."
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Post by psuhistory on Apr 28, 2014 21:51:56 GMT -5
Oddly configured park that was severely constrained by its lot. This futuristic engraving shows the absence of any left field stands, a problem that's just visible in the photo too...
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Post by psuhistory on Apr 28, 2014 21:57:16 GMT -5
"First ever game at Crosley (Redland Field) in Cincinnati. April 11, 1912. Day after the Titanic set sail." I have a piece of Crosley Field wall on my desk; quite sentimental about it, actually, and don't care who knows it...
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Post by Lark11 on May 1, 2014 19:32:58 GMT -5
1919 World Series video clips from British Canadian media:
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Post by psuhistory on May 1, 2014 20:25:29 GMT -5
Now I'm not sure about the previous identification of Williams, based on his likeness in still photos. Here's some film of him, using a more sidearm motion... www.blackbetsy.com/movies/lefty.mpg
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Post by Lark11 on May 1, 2014 20:35:29 GMT -5
Now I'm not sure about the previous identification of Williams, based on his likeness in still photos. Here's some film of him, using a more sidearm motion... www.blackbetsy.com/movies/lefty.mpgYeah, I think the news film identified him as Dickie Kerr, but I'm not sure either way.
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Post by psuhistory on May 1, 2014 20:52:44 GMT -5
I think the film in the second page of the thread is a shorter section of the film you just posted: it looks like the same pitcher, must be Kerr. I didn't think the earlier film looked like Kerr in the 1919 White Sox team photo. Good to have it resolved: despite the relatively small quantity of evidence, it's often hard to match up photos and film or even identify the individuals in photos with certainty...
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Post by Lark11 on May 1, 2014 21:05:07 GMT -5
I think the film in the second page of the thread is a shorter section of the film you just posted: it looks like the same pitcher, must be Kerr. I didn't think the earlier film looked like Kerr in the 1919 White Sox team photo. Good to have it resolved: despite the relatively small quantity of evidence, it's often hard to match up photos and film or even identify the individuals in photos with certainty... Yeah, going back that far there isn't a ton of visual evidence, at least that I've seen, so that makes it tough. I've read and heard about these guys more than I've seen them.
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Post by quantumfootball on May 1, 2014 23:28:10 GMT -5
I'm not sure if this is historical enough, but I thought others might want to see it.
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Post by psuhistory on May 2, 2014 7:08:56 GMT -5
Very cool film, QF; it has to be from 1956: Dodgers still in Brooklyn, Robinson has joined the Reds (20 years old here), and Jablonski rather than Hoak is the Reds 3b. That was a pretty good team: 91-63, third place but only two games behind another Brooklyn pennant-winner...
In a general way, it's an interesting question whether the clip provides evidence of the greater American awareness of and interest in baseball during the 1950s. All the panelists seem to be aware of how the New York clubs fared during the day's games, and this isn't treated as unusual knowledge. It's one of the women on the panel who states that all (three) of them lost and who knows that the Yankees lost while playing on the road. They quickly establish that Cincinnati and Milwaukee are the visiting clubs in the New York area at the time. This detailed knowledge of even the local baseball season is less common now. In addition, the panelists agree very quickly that baseball must be the "outdoor, warm-weather entertainment" in question. I'm not sure that a similar group now would be as fast to eliminate the many other possibilities...
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Post by Lark11 on May 2, 2014 13:44:41 GMT -5
Some of the back-story surrounding the above posted 1919 World Series video: sabr.org/latest/rare-footage-1919-world-series-action-discovered-canadian-archiveRare footage of 1919 World Series discovered in Canadian archiveBy Jacob Pomrenke A remarkable newsreel featuring nearly five minutes of game action from Games One and Three of the controversial 1919 World Series is now available online, thanks to the Library and Archives Canada and the Dawson City Museum in Yukon, Canada. The newsreel was originally filmed by British Canadian Pathé News and preserved for decades in an old swimming pool-turned-hockey rink in Dawson City until it was re-discovered in the Canadian national archive this January by Chicago filmmaker Bill Morrison, according to a story last month by the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. It is not the first footage available of the 1919 World Series — in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox were banned for intentionally throwing the Series to the Cincinnati Reds — but it is perhaps the highest quality video available of the games on the field. The new film was posted on LibraryArchiveCanada's YouTube page on April 25, 2014, at the request of SABR member Dave Filipi, film/video director of the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus. Filipi showed the Pathé newsreel for the first time last month at his annual Rare Baseball Films event. The Pathé newsreel includes never-before-seen footage from the first and fourth innings of Game One of the 1919 World Series, plus an aerial flyover of Comiskey Park and a panorama of the ballplayers in makeshift dugouts before Game Three, and a shot of fans gathered in New York City to "watch" the game on a mechanical scoreboard.A quick 3-second clip beginning at the 3:06 mark of the video online appears to be one of the most disputed plays of the World Series, one of the plays famously circled by sports writer Hugh Fullerton on his scorecard in the press box: the botched double play ball hit by the Reds' Larry Kopf and fielded by White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte in the fourth inning.Cicotte was said to have made "a dazzling play" to field the ball, but Swede Risberg was unable to turn the double play. At full speed, the play doesn't appear to be unusually suspicious and it is impossible to tell with any certainty whether Cicotte's throw to Swede Risberg at second base was too low or too slow, or whether Risberg delayed in making the double-play throw to Chick Gandil at first base. But according to the Chicago Tribune account of the game afterward, the Reds' 5-run rally in that inning "hung on the toenail" of Kopf beating the throw to first. Only one thing is for sure: All three of the White Sox players involved in that play later admitted to receiving bribe money from gamblers to fix the World Series. At the 3:26 mark, a series of successive clips shows the Reds scoring those five runs in the fourth inning of Game One with hard-hit balls to the outfield off Cicotte by Ivy Wingo (3:26), Morrie Rath (3:30), and Jake Daubert (3:35). On the Daubert single, which gave Cincinnati a 6-1 lead and knocked Cicotte out of the game, Gandil makes a lunging catch near the pitcher's mound to cut off Shano Collins' throw from right field. Then the film cuts to a conference at the mound where Cicotte is about to be yanked by manager Kid Gleason. The Pathé newsreel begins out of chronological order with footage of Dickey Kerr and the White Sox winning Game Three, along with some game action from that day at Comiskey Park. (Reds pitcher Ray Fisher's error in the second inning can be clearly seen at the 0:53 mark.) This new film is one of many exciting discoveries related to the 1919 World Series and the Black Sox Scandal that have come to light in recent years and helped to fundamentally change our understanding of "baseball's darkest hour." Among them are the treasure trove of Black Sox files, including long-lost trial transcripts and grand jury testimony, purchased by the Chicago History Museum in 2007. Organizational contract cards provided by Major League Baseball to the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown in 2002 have also debunked the myth that the White Sox players were underpaid relative to their peers, long thought to be the primary cause behind the Black Sox Scandal. (In fact, as Bob Hoie detailed in his landmark 2012 article for Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, the White Sox had one of the highest payrolls in the game and Eddie Cicotte was the second-highest-paid pitcher in baseball behind Walter Johnson.) To learn more about new developments with the Black Sox Scandal, consider joining SABR's Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. JACOB POMRENKE is the chair of SABR's Black Sox Scandal Research Committee and the Web Content Editor/Producer for SABR.org. He can be contacted at jpomrenke@sabr.org or find him on Twitter at @buckweaver.
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