According to Dressed to the Nines website, the Red Sox wore that style in 1916,1917 & 1918. By 1919 the pinstripes were gone.

http://exhibits.baseballhalloffame.o...splay+uniforms

Thanks David and Randall,

This is where some of the issues come from. Marc Okkonen is an INCREDIBLE resource for jerseys and the such. But, sometimes they're some inconsistencies. And it's definitely not often. In this particular circumstance, I think there might be one.

The main reason I think this is because Babe's uniform, even though is lit and all, to me it seems to be too light in value to be the gray away jersey. But then again, from what I've seen Boston didn't have the team name on the front of their home jerseys during that era, so it's possible that was just reserved for the road jerseys.

Then, there's the pinstriping. In the photo, they're very thin but spread far apart. If you look at photos of the away Boston jerseys from that period, all of their pinstripes run very close together. If you look at the home jerseys, according to Okkonen, they did away with pinstripes on the home unis in 1915, though the ones before that year are stretched wider than the other away ones.

Alright, I'm dizzy.

I don't really know what to think. I just wish I could find a few Boston gamers from that era to compare and contrast. And I'm sure if I eventually, do, I'll probably have to change what I've done thus far. It happens.

Thanks for letting me babble.

Graig

There are some photos of the Babe from The Library of Congress website.

#42
 

Graig.......I bet you could make this Burke photo of Jackie come to life. I've always thought in was quite evocative.......

Tim,

You're right - that shot's a beauty. I absolutely love the light hitting him from behind like that. And the look on his face! You can just see that determination and fire. There were few who could emote in their expressions as much as Jackie, and considering what he went through during his first few years in the league, it's even that much more profound.

Thanks for posting it!

Graig

Greg, I did a little digging, and it seems that the newspaper caption affixed to the back was referring to a game played May 12, 1921. Why they would use a Red Sox photo of Ruth when he was in his second season with the Yankees I have no idea. On May 12, 1921 Ruth hit a two-run homer off George Dauss of the Tigers in a 11-10 Yankee win, his 10th of the season, with one man on base. Tellingly, NY Giant George Highpockets Kelly hit his 8th the same day to lead the NL at the time--the caption refers to Ruth being "more or less pressed by Kelly across the page there" (a reference to sharing headlines in New York?) for the home run crown. Seems to me this must be the date of the news clipping.

Of course this does not help you pin down the date of the photo. It does seem from Okkonen's database that the Red Sox roadies were lighter then gray in 1919 and lighter than they had been in the prior few seasons. Since the pinstripes in the photo are thinner, spread further and thus less noticeable from far away, perhaps photographic evidence used in Okkonnen's research did not pick them up. Finally, I see that the handwriting on the back of the photo states "Babe Ruth in L.A. (Los Angeles?, Louisiana?) Nov. 1, 1919". Maybe this was taken post-season at some barnstorming or other exhibition game.

Todd,

Thanks so much for chiming in, as well as looking into the matter.

I definitely find it odd that the papers would have used the image of Ruth in '21 for such an occasion, but I suppose it happened back then. Either way, I think you're definitely right about that May game, especially with it's relationship to Kelly's performance. I suppose that was the smoking gun that I was looking for.

The uniform stuff still bothers me, though. I did some research on the Conlon Collection website (https://www.theconloncollection.com/), and the few photos of Red Sox players from 1919 have similar unis to the Babe's, but their pinstripes are still pretty thin and close together. And, since Conlon never really took his photos in Boston (except for some World Series shots in 1912), I'm pretty sure that the depicted images are on the road.

So, is it possible that the image is still from 1919 on the road, and maybe Ruth just got a jersey from a different fabric or something? Or maybe it is a home uniform? I wish there was something that had ironclad provenance to go by, being that they're plenty of inconsistencies in Okkonen's work, the Conlon site, game-worn stuff in private collections, or now, even newspapers.

My head hurts.

Graig

Greg,

Some cursory research shows that Babe went on a West-Coast exhibition tour in November, 1919 which again is a date referenced on the back of the photo. He played with or against Buck Weaver in Sacramento that month, and may have appeared in San Francisco and Oxnard too. It would not be a stretch to find that he was in LA the first of that month. Possibly the photo comes from that tour, although I am not familiar with whether the players were allowed to wear their team's uniforms post-season and in the 20's they typically did not.

If the photo came from that tour it would have been an interesting time nonetheless. Playing with Weaver just weeks after the Black Sox series, having demanded a healthy pay bump and less than two months away from being traded to the Yankees by a failing Frazee, that would have made for a lot of hot stove talk at the time.

Thanks for the new photos Graig.

GVH is fantastic. Your brother is a lucky man. I will up Jay's offer to a toaster, a blender, as well as a set of china.

To me, the difference between a good fine artist and a not so good one is the formers' ability to capture weight. The weight in your GVH is spot on. Everything hangs like it should, face included. It's beautiful.

The painting is so true to the photo, so I can understand why you wouldn't, but did you ever have any thoughts about not painting in the stanchion at his left?

Todd, again, thank you so much for diving into this. Everything you have mentioned sounds pretty legit. I did read that he indeed made it to LA in the off-season for exhibition games (making $500 a day, plus expenses), as well as to play golf and appear in a few movies that never saw the light of day. I guess I'm gonna have to do a bit more research into his exhibition stuff, though the information can be sparse with casual searching sometimes. Maybe contacting the Boston Public Library would be the way to go. Either way, thank you so much for helping out!

martindl, I would break that china set in five seconds flat - I'm as graceful as a rock. But seriously, thank you very much for your compliments on GVH! I'm thrilled that you think I captured his weight. It's something that I strive for in addition to all of the stuff about light. Making these things have three-dimensionality is always a challenge on a two-dimensional surface.

Regarding the stanchion, you mean the one on the left of the canvas? I tried to plan the picture so that the pole didn't appear to hug the side of the piece, mainly because it can be a bit disorienting when you have two parallel lines so close to one another, especially vertical ones - they can create a lot of tension. But, it was still important for me to make a suggestion of it with the diagonal top. By leaving it in, I thought it created a nice echo to the gesture of GVH's collar. Also, having that little suggestion makes the ballpark 'real' to me - in other words, now I can say that the painting depicts GVH at the West Side Park in 1903, rather than having it at a more random place. In the end, it can certainly help me build a narrative around the painting whenever I can get it up on my website (which is woefully out of date). And looking at it that way, I guess you're right, I'm really just trying to stay accurate to what's there - and sometimes, that makes editing a bit tougher.

...or, did you mean the little window on the right of the canvas?