Photography: Greatest photographs not taken

[sphere and ash]

The Lueker incident is a great case in point. Thank you for the newspaper image.

What strikes me is that Lueker was attacked on May 15; the newspaper image is five days later. Why didn’t anyone capture Cobb beating Lueker? Where was Charles Conlon that day at Hilltop? Where were others?

My “challenge” still stands.

[Dewey]

I respectfully disagree. The players' strike is more significant and newsworthy than Cobb laying the smackdown on a fan.

[prewarsports]

Do the 3000 hit milestones and 300 win milestones not count toward the challenge? These were predictable events after 1920 and still no photographers.

I believe the answer is three-part.

1. Nobody really cared a whole lot. It was not until the advent of the radio photo or the wire photo in the late 1920's through the mid 1930's that spot photography or needing shots of an actual event became vogue. Up until this moment, a stock photo would work for nearly any event and public demand for a photographer on hand at every event did not drive the newspapers to be there in case something happened. It was supply and demand and there were stock photos on hand of pretty much every player (supply) and the public did not cry for images of actual events (no demand).

2. Even major newspapers would only have a handful of guys on staff taking pictures so there was absolutely no way to cover every sporting event. Often they would show up for the START of a game, take a few shots and hurry back to their offices to develop the images and make the evening edition. Getting photos of the event was paramount to being there in case something happened later in the game. Every city with a team was big enough to have competing newspapers and that meant an evening edition with deadlines. This is why essentially every major sporting event has pre-game images and almost no surviving images of the aftermath unless they were taken by amateurs. This method survived until wire photos became standard.

3. Major innovations took place in the 1920's to the quality and portability of cameras which is why as the decade wore on, the genre of "photo-journalism" really came into its own. The desire for better photographs was a byproduct of technology and not the other way around. The public did not know they wanted images of actual events until they started to become available, then the desire drove innovation to the advent of the wire photo.

It was a different world and the thought of a photographer sticking around for an entire game just in case something important happened was not important. It was a 9-5 job to these guys and they wanted to get the shot and get home to their families just like the rest of us.

[sphere and ash]

Rhys—you can tell you’ve looked at a few hundred thousand images.

I agree with everything you say in paragraphs (1) and (2): it really wasn’t until October 1920 that newspapers felt they needed photographs of play-by-play to connect with their readers. And most newspaper photo departments were inadequately staffed (this is what had created the opening for the Bain and Thompson agencies). Even when photographers were at a game, they often photographed the first play or first few innings and then went to hand in their negatives for the evening edition.

I disagree with what you say in paragraph (3). The pivotal innovation in camera design in 1920 wasn’t making cameras more portable, but less so; making them extremely large by increasing the focal length so they could photograph action at second base. This is what allowed Wambsganss to be photographed.

I didn’t mean to diminish the idea that 3,000 hit milestones in the 1920s and 1930’s weren’t photographed; you yourself recognized in a previous post that such milestones weren’t celebrated at the time and didn’t become newsworthy until many years later.

Dewey—your point is well taken. It had never occurred to me that someone might think the walkout was historically significant, so I didn’t give it enough thought. I don’t think it would appear on anyone’s list of “100 Classic Baseball Moments,” but others may disagree. I do think the Lueker incident is more interesting, certainly photographically. Had I been a photo editor at the New York Evening Telegram, I would have loved for Conlon to bring back an image of Cobb stomping Lueker.