In REA's 2010 auction I bought a group of items from the estate of former Cleveland Nap Jack Graney. Included were photos of Graney with Larry, a bull terrier who was known around the league as the team's mascot. According to SABR:
Graney also cared for a bull terrier named Larry who became the club's mascot. During the 1913 season Larry, as the Naps official mascot, entertained fans before games by leapfrogging over players' backs, chasing down fans that carried straw hats, and retrieving foul balls in batting practice. Larry traveled with the team on the road and entertained the players on the field and in the Pullman cars. Often during the season the dog became so exhausted that Graney would send Larry back to his hometown of St. Thomas for a rest. The dog took an overnight lake steamer to Port Stanley, Ontario, where crewmembers let him off; he then rode the interurban streetcar to St. Thomas. The streetcar conductor would drop off Larry at Elgin Street and the dog would trot over to Graney's parents' home. In July of 1917 Graney took Larry along for a visit to the Rose Building in Cleveland. Larry became lost in the building and by the time he was found, two days later, had contracted distemper. Sadly, he had to be put down. The Cleveland baseball team never had another dog mascot.
There also is a book about Graney and Larry:
http://www.barbaragregorich.com/index.php?page=40
Anyway, the lot caught my eye because of the Cleveland connection and the items featuring Larry. My plan was to reframe the piece that contained the three photos (pictured below in the REA catalog photo), but I never got around to doing it. Five years later, I finally did.
Originally my intent was to redo the framing and keep it as close as possible to what it looked like when it was in Graney's possession. But after my framer and I removed the photos from the original frame, we saw that the middle photo has
"Larry" 1913 printed on it. The original frame job matted out this printing. Because it adds so much to the photo, I wanted to include it, so the new mat is a bit different than the original. We chose a frame that has a weathered look, and the color of the mat is fairly close to what the original would have looked like before it faded.
Another discovery when we looked at the reverse of the photos is that the middle one has Van Oeyen's stamp. Talk about a nice bonus.
Before and after photos:
07-28-2015, 04:22 PM
Jack Graney and Larry the dog (reframing)
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