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The Leslie Jones Boston Public Library Baseball Collection Photo Gallery
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Great Baseball Photo Collections, Part One:
I was honored this past weekend to give a PowerPoint presentation at the annual SABR convention in Minneapolis highlighting the Leslie Jones Boston Public Library Baseball Collection. Today I present the first of a three-part series on the greatest baseball photo collections. In Part Two, I’ll show selections from the George Brace collection, and in Part Three, the Charles Conlon collection.
The Leslie Jones Boston Public Library Baseball Collection
Leslie Jones was the sports photographer for the Boston Herald-Traveler from the 1920s into the early 1950s. The vast majority of his work was from baseball’s Golden Age of the 1930s. During this long span, he amassed a photographic collection of the Boston Red Sox and Boston Braves of close to 3000 pictures. Almost all of the photos were taken at Fenway Park or Braves Field.
The collection was stored away in the recesses of the Boston Public Library and was largely forgotten. In 2011, someone from the Boston Public Library rediscovered this treasure trove. But there was one problem: Almost all of the players in the photos (other than the obvious star players) were unidentified. The Boston Public Library then contacted The Society For American Baseball Research (SABR) asking for help in identifying the pictures. I was asked to join the team headed by author Mark Stang tasked with identifying the players in the photos.
Many players were easy to identify, but others required massive amounts of research, time, and effort. It always gave me a wonderful feeling of satisfaction when I could positively identify some obscure, long-forgotten ballplayer from the ’30s or ’40s who would otherwise be totally lost to history.
This historic collection included many individual and small group shots, team pictures, fans, gag shots, action shots, locker room shots, celebrities, players’ wives, umpires, front office personnel…you name it…if it had anything to do with Boston baseball during this period, it’s in this collection. The collection provides a wonderful “taste” of baseball as it existed during this golden, bygone era, and also serves as a great slice of “Americana” from the ’30’s and 40’s.
There are some extremely rare photos in this amazing collection, including some never-before-seen pictures of star players like Ruth, DiMaggio, Williams, Foxx, Cronin, and Grove. There’s a lot of shots of Ruth from his last year 1935 as a member of the Boston Braves. Since the collection covers both the National League (the Braves and their NL opponents), and the American League (the Red Sox and their AL opponents), many lesser-known and largely forgotten players from both leagues are featured in the collection.
I thought it would be fun to post some of the best from the collection. The featured photo above is one of my favorites: Casey Stengel with some of his 1939 Boston Bees players, wonderfully colorized by Don Stokes. Check out the photo gallery above to see some of my favorites from the collection. Other players in the photo are: Fred Frankhouse, Al Simmons, Red Barkley, and Buddy Hassett.
Gary Livacari
Photo Credits: All from Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection; Colorizations by Don Stokes
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