[sphere and ash]

Originally Posted by lumberjack

The pre 1920 photos concentrated on the ceremonial: a flag raising, meetings at home plate with umpires or team captains, the size of the crowd for an important game...that sort of thing.

The question is why these photographic conventions became common: they’re easy and don’t require the photographer to stay for the entire game, allowing them to make the evening edition.

Originally Posted by lumberjack

If you lived in New York City in 1910, there would have been 228 major league games played between April and October. That's 2052 innings. At some point, a lot of editors might have said, "Haven't we done enough of that this year."

That’s true, but why not think of capturing important plays during the World Series for readers? The idea was not pursued until 1920. When the Daily News pursued the idea, they referred to it on their cover as “Something New in Baseball.”

Originally Posted by lumberjack

Beanings....I have a Paul Thompson credited shot of Geo. Moriarity being carried off the field when he was with Detroit (the circumstances of his injury are not explained), but beanings, let's face it, happened a lot. A minor leaguer, John Dodge, had been killed a few years earlier, but it doesn't appear to have been big news.
Charles Conlon, who seems like a very formal soul, might not have taken a photo of a prostrate Ray Chapman....Weegee, had he been doing baseball, probably wouldn't have had any problem with capturing the moment. Attitudes changed....
There is a shot of an unconscious Babe Ruth from the twenties, Mickey Cochrane in 1937 in New York, and plenty of shots of an injured Pete Reiser. There are more.

Beanings may have been common (I don’t know the statistics), but it was immediately apparent to everyone present that Chapman’s beaning was different: the home plate umpire yelled into the stands for a doctor. Some people have suggested to me that it’s possible that the Daily News and other newspapers didn’t want to publish an image of someone dying (and you suggest that Conlon might not have wanted the image). That’s a credible thesis, but I think it’s undercut by the potential for other images that day: for example, one of the umpire calling for a doctor in the house. And it’s also undercut by the Daily News’ decision in 1927 to seek and then to publish an image of Ruth Snyder at the moment of her execution with the headline “Dead!”

Somewhere I have the last image of Chapman ever taken—when I find it I’ll post it here. It was taken in Cleveland; Chapman died in New York. I’ll end where I started this thread: I think images of the Chapman beaning are the greatest baseball photographs not taken. You just can’t exceed the pathos of an umpire yelling into the stands for a doctor, already knowing that it’s almost futile. And you can’t exceed the pathos and composition of Chapman being carried, echoing the Descent from the Cross, to the clubhouse in center field.