BATTER UP!

[Ghostsoldier]

Rob

 

[2jakes]

"Jackie Mitchell, one of the first female pitchers in professional baseball
pitching for her minor league team in a 1931 exhibition game against
the New York Yankees.
She struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis,
took Ruth’s side on the issue and voided Mitchell’s contract to play
with the men, claiming baseball to be “too strenuous” for women.

 

[2jakes]

(2009) Woman in Fresno, California found a rare card of the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings amongst a pile of ordinary non-sport contents of a storage space she purchased for her antique store.

Card is 140 years old, the same decade Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated
and 4 years after the Civil War ended as well as 16 years prior to the first Gas powered vehicle and the birth of Babe Ruth.

 

[LizzieMaine]

View attachment 83335

Rob

A rare shot of the post-1911 Polo Grounds in its original configuration, with the edges of the grandstand trimmed by a gorgeous and ornate pressed-metal frieze. You can't really see much detail of it here, but the roof frieze featured a series of oval-shaped vignettes depicting the official seals of each of the eight cities (or seven cities and one borough) represented in the National League, in a repeating sequence that stretched the full length of the grandstand. This frieze proved difficult to maintain, and was removed after the 1922 season, when the grandstand was extended all the way around to the edges of the outfield, giving the park the familiar horseshoe shape it would retain for the rest of its life.

No fragments of the original Polo Grounds frieze are known to exist anywhere, and photos showing it up close are practically nonexistant. A while back a researcher on the Baseball Fever forum was able to piece together photos of each of the vignettes, and if there's any existing imagery better showing the details, I don't know where it is.

Note that this frieze existed more than a decade before Yankee Stadium, with its own famous frieze, was built -- but because it was destroyed after just eleven years, it's nowhere near as famous.

 

[2jakes]

The new stadium was to be patterned after the new wave of recently opened or remodeled ballparks that had steel and reinforced concrete as their primary building materials, a list that included Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, League Park in Cleveland, Shibe Park in Philadelphia, and Comiskey Park in Chicago. Although other teams were constructing impressive edifices, John Brush had ambitions for a stadium for the Giants that would surpass all others in terms of size, structure, and design.

It was faced with a decorative frieze on the façade of the upper deck, containing a series of allegorical treatments in bas relief, while the façade of the roof was adorned with the coats of arms of all National League teams. "The design at the balcony level is a repeated motif," explained Herts in an article written for Architecture and Building magazine in 1912,

The roof level contained a series of eight shields repeated in successive panels,
The box seats were designed upon the lines of the royal boxes of the Colosseum in Rome with Roman-style pylons flanking the horseshoe-shaped grandstand on both ends. The aisle seats had figural iron scrollwork with the Giants' "NY" emblem.

Brush planned to depart from the nomenclature traditionally used for the home of the Giants; the new facility, to reflect his contribution, would be known as Brush Stadium.
Fans and news reporters had other ideas, though, and the name Polo Grounds persevered. As Lawrence S. Ritter said of the rebuilt structure in his book, Lost Ballparks,
"Polo Grounds it had been and Polo Grounds it would remain."

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Rob

 

[2jakes]

Great!

Rob...
Do you know why the World Series is called the World Series if only American Teams play?

 

[Ghostsoldier]

View attachment 83444

Rob...
Do you know why the World Series is called the World Series if only American Teams play?

No...but I've always wondered, lol.

Rob

 

[2jakes]

No...but I've always wondered, lol.

Rob

"Paging LizzieMaine!”

 

[LizzieMaine]

Because, in 1903, Americans believed they *were* the World.

Before the "World's Series" was instituted, there were other post-season showcases, usually pitting the National League champion against that of the rival American Association, or, after the AA collapsed, against the second-place team in the NL.

The "Dauvray Cup Series" was promoted starting in 1887 by a publicity-oriented actress named Helen Dauvray, who happened to be married to John Montgomery Ward of the New York Giants. To win the Cup, the champions of the NL and the AA played a post-season series with the winner to retain the Cup until the following season. After Dauvray and Ward broke up, the idea of a Cup series was abandoned until a businessman named William Temple produced the "Temple Cup," which carried on the same idea thru the 1897 season.

The Temple Cup survives today in the Hall of Fame, but the Dauvray Cup hasn't been seen in public since 1893. Someone, somewhere, has an impressive and important baseball artifact buried in their attic.

 

[2jakes]

Because, in 1903, Americans believed they *were* the World.

Short and to the point!
Love it!



Edit:
Thanks for the follow-up information.
You're the best!

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Thanks, Lizzie.

I saw the Temple Cup a few years ago, when I visited Cooperstown.

Rob

 

[Fading Fast]

Because, in 1903, Americans believed they *were* the World....

Wow, and we hadn't even won two world wars yet. A bit premature.

Being a bit less snarky, was baseball being played anywhere else at a similar professional level (this is a sincere question)?

Last thought: if "World Series" was a "Boys From Marketing" invention - kudos to them as that's some arrogant, but powerful, branding.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Baseball was already extremely popular in Cuba by the turn of the century, and they had professional leagues almost as early as we did. It was also a going thing in the Dominican Republic by 1900, so there could, conceivably, have been, if not a true "World Series" at least a "Hemisphere Series," if not for certain racial mythologies.

 

[Harp]

Cincinnati stole last nite's game. Excellent 8th inning aggression and effort, and Joe's catching hell for having Ian Happ play center over Almora.

 

[HudsonHawk]

A couple of my replica hats; the Black Sox being a particular historical interest to me, here's the 1917 and 1920 style WS caps, along with a vintage catcher's mitt...I also have some 30s, 40s and 50s Yankees style hats, and several other gloves.

Rob

So are you a collector of old baseball equipment? I have a few old gloves that I've managed to get my hands on, but not a serious collector or anything. I really love old equipment, especially the gloves. I'm not much of a collector of things, but that's one thing I can see myself getting in to.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Mmmmmmm, unwrapped hot dogs slowly poaching in a Sterno steamer. Some things never change.

As Jon Stewart said during one of his NYC pizza rants...only three things are allowed on a hot dog: mustard, onions and stale cart water. That's it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I was deeply shocked to discover, last time I was at Fenway, that after more than a century they no longer serve Gulden's Mustard. It's Gold's now, and while it's OK, it lacks the grainy pungence of Gulden's, which is a necessary complement to the dirty-water funk.

(To be fair, if you get a weenie under the stands, it comes off a roller grill. Only the roving vendors still have the steam boxes.)

 

[HudsonHawk]

I was deeply shocked to discover, last time I was at Fenway, that after more than a century they no longer serve Gulden's Mustard. It's Gold's now, and while it's OK, it lacks the grainy pungence of Gulden's, which is a necessary complement to the dirty-water funk.

(To be fair, if you get a weenie under the stands, it comes off a roller grill. Only the roving vendors still have the steam boxes.)

I confess to being a mustard snob. I have probably 10 or 12 jars of different kinds in the fridge as I type. I guess we all have our character flaws.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Because, in 1903, Americans believed they *were* the World.

Before the "World's Series" was instituted, there were other post-season showcases, usually pitting the National League champion against that of the rival American Association, or, after the AA collapsed, against the second-place team in the NL.

The "Dauvray Cup Series" was promoted starting in 1887 by a publicity-oriented actress named Helen Dauvray, who happened to be married to John Montgomery Ward of the New York Giants. To win the Cup, the champions of the NL and the AA played a post-season series with the winner to retain the Cup until the following season. After Dauvray and Ward broke up, the idea of a Cup series was abandoned until a businessman named William Temple produced the "Temple Cup," which carried on the same idea thru the 1897 season.

The Temple Cup survives today in the Hall of Fame, but the Dauvray Cup hasn't been seen in public since 1893. Someone, somewhere, has an impressive and important baseball artifact buried in their attic.

There is a popular myth that the World's Series is so named because it was sponsored by the New York World newspaper. However, there is no evidence of this, certainly not any contemporary evidence. It's up there with Abner Doubleday and Babe Ruth's called shot.